Trevor Collins

This signal is so interesting because, again, it came in at 6EQUJ5.

And these are often confused for an encoded message or radio signal, as if this is the string of characters intentionally sent to us.

However, these characters actually represent the signals intensity variation over time by a limitation of this.

I mean, again, we're talking about the 70s, so a limitation of how it was measuring and how it was printing.

They needed a single character way to represent the strength of a signal.

Now, before I give my attempt at explaining this signal, I want to read an excerpt from what Emin had to say regarding deciphering these characters, because again, he's a brilliant mind converting raw data into single characters.

And I think it's interesting.

Quote, each of the first 50 columns of the computer printout shows the successive values of intensity or power received from the big ear radio telescope in each channel.

10 kHz wide, in successive 12 second intervals.

10 seconds was used for the actual sampling, and another approximately 2 seconds was needed for the computer processing.

In order to conserve space on the printout, Bob Dixon and I decided to use a coding method that would result in only one alphanumeric character for each intensity.

He goes on further explaining this in a much more scientific way.

But in very simple terms, Emmett explains the strength or volume of this signal was marked by a single character, a number or a letter.

Of course, you have zero through nine and then you have A through Z. Zero is not printed out at all.

So all the gaps you see on the sheet, those are zeros.

That's the lowest strength.

That's essentially background noise.

And then Z was the highest measurable strength.

So as you can see in the image again, the signals move from zero up to six, then it goes to E, then to Q, then peaking at U before it then drops back down to J and then five and then back to baseline.

So if I'm losing you there, I converted all of these to numbers.