Trevor Collins

While completing their research and studies, Paris and his colleagues learned that two comets, 266P Christensen and P2008Y2 Gibbs, again, named by brilliant scientists, not marketing, they would have passed through the detection area that Big Ear was recording in 1977.

So this is another, I'm going to pause for a second and recognize the mind-blowing nature of this, right?

To your point, we can roll back the clock knowing where Big Ear was aimed, knowing the trajectories of these comets in our solar system and be like, wait a minute, around that same time, these two comets were in the near the same spot in the night sky.

Maybe they did it.

Maybe one of them caused this signal in some way.

So they explained that the signal could have come from a hydrogen cloud that was either around one of the comets or maybe potentially between the two comets.

And Paris and his team then tried to recreate this phenomenon because, of course, comets come back around.

You've heard of Halley's Comet.

While 266P, Christensen once again passed through the sky region around Sagittarius.

I don't remember what year that would have been, but this study was in 2017.

And they determined that a total of four different comets matched the WOW signal.

Yeah, we're getting somewhere here.

When confronted with the fact that the original signal was way stronger than this team was observing on these comets, they explained that the radio telescope that they were using was much smaller than Big Ear.

So they're saying, okay, while Big Ear might not have been the most sensitive, ours is even smaller, hence why our signals are smaller.

This has been a frequent issue with strange signals captured since 1977.

None of them have been able to record the strength that Big Ear captured.

And so some think that that disproves the comet theory, that a comet couldn't naturally emit a signal this strong.

But they're saying, no, it's because our measuring surfaces, in which case I say, wait for the comet to come back around and measure it with something bigger and see.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think it... I don't know what... Okay, Christian, help me out.