Chapter 1: What is the Wow! Signal and why is it significant?
In 1977, an astronomer noted a reading on a radio telescope unlike any he had ever seen before. He was so amazed by the 72-second signal that he circled the anomaly in red ink, writing simply, WOW. For decades, astronomers and researchers have tried to replicate or explain this strange reading. Was this a celestial oddity or a sign from extraterrestrial life?
Today, we're analyzing the WOW signal. This is Red Web. Welcome back, Task Force, to another episode of Red Web, the podcast all about unsolved mysteries, true crime, and the unknown. I am your resident mystery enthusiast, Trevor Collins, and joining me, hearing about this case potentially for the very first time, Alfredo Diaz.
I...
don't recall this mystery at all whatsoever i'm really very intrigued kind of reminds me of our was our test episode the blip yes or the bloop the bloop and then also there's some really iconic movies where scientists hear like a noise and then it spins into contact with aliens and whatnot and that's always an interesting always always interesting there's usually thrillers those are fun to watch
And so I'm very intrigued, wondering if we can actually hear the sound, what things that we can dive into that are tangible. You got to love already off the rip.
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Chapter 2: How was the Wow! Signal discovered and recorded?
Multiple scientists have taken a listen to it and very interested to see what the theories are.
Okay, so we got into a few things that I'm very excited to talk about, but I am blown away you haven't heard of the Wow Signal. This was something Christian and I, year one we talked about, and we thought, man, this mystery is a little too thin. It wouldn't be a full episode. It's something I geek out about a lot because I have a very big interest in space.
It's why I studied aerospace, aeronautics way back in the day. I've left that life like a decade ago, but I have a lot of little late knowledge on that But it's why I'm excited to talk about it today because there are so many things to explain here as to why it is so strange and why it is so hard to explain. Lots of theories, many of which came in recent years.
So I'm glad we kind of didn't cover it until now. But one little thing I want to clarify as we dive in, for anybody who hasn't heard of this before, Fredo, it is a recorded signal, like a radio signal, but there is no sound recording. And so we have some tangible evidence that I'll break down as to how we measured the signal.
But other than that, though, we won't have something to like grip into and listen to. Man, now that would have been cool. Oh, that would have been cool. Okay. It was a recorded signal. Interesting.
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Chapter 3: What theories exist about the origin of the Wow! Signal?
Okay. Good to know.
so there's a lot to explain with this one you know and i'm sure many task force members have casually heard of this so i'm going to give you the quick background as to what this signal is why it is so interesting but then we're going to move into the investigation phase i'm going to break down what this signal actually means because i'm sure everybody has seen this signal seen the circled wow before i'm going to show you that screenshot of the actual reading
Break down the science and try to give it to you in layman's terms. And then I'm going to geek out like mad as we go into the theories. There are some very interesting ones that attempt to explain this, of course, culminating with the idea of was this an intentional signal from deep space from an intelligent life? That's a very possible viability because the universe is just so vast.
Odds are there's something out there. It's just finding that needle in the haystack, right?
You got to think it's nearly impossible, though, just off of the fact of... Essentially, the further you look out, the more in the past you're looking. Isn't that how it works? Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
So if someone's trying to make contact with us, they could be like, hey, there's not even humans on this planet yet. It's just a planet that has...
caveman or even not even that right and they're just sending a signal hoping that eventually we we understand it or we get it sure so that's always so interesting too and the thing too is like well we look out there right we have we took a look at these planets and everything like that we're like oh man there's nothing there's potential for life but there really isn't life but there could be life there right now we're just it just takes so long for light to travel and so we're looking into the past it's crazy yeah
It could be something as relatively close as a thousand light years. So you're looking at the planet as it is now, but it's light. You know, we're used to mirrors and it feels instant. We're used to flashlights and it feels instant.
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Chapter 4: How do scientists measure radio signals from space?
But over this vast distance, if you're looking at a planet, it could be, or a star, it could be a thousand light years, which means you're looking at that star as it was a thousand years ago. It could be way longer than that to the point where, yeah, maybe life has changed. come or gone since then. Space is wild. It is so cool. It's very cool. And it is very empty.
Okay, as we dive in, we're here at the end of March, and we record these episodes in advance, so I wanna be very candid about the fact that we had a lot going on in March, First and foremost, I want to talk about things Task Force to put on your calendars for this week. On Wednesday, we have Break Room Live yet again. That is shifting its time up one hour. It will be 5 to 6 p.m. Central Time.
Come hang out with us as our behind the scenes podcast. If you want to be in the show interacting with us as we record it, then please come join us live in the Discord. Otherwise, we will post that recording the next month. And then on Friday, this Friday, we have part two of Fieldwork, our gameplay series in Obey the Voice. We had an amazing time playing that one. And so we want to finish it up.
And so this is the finale.
Chapter 5: What role does the hydrogen line play in extraterrestrial communication?
But as I was kind of saying, now has never been a better time to join the task force at redwebpod.com because we have a couple more ghost hunts. One that we did at the beginning of this month. Some other stretch goals coming out, red web radio, video essay, and then a red web on the road.
All of these things were from last year's five-year stream, which means we have extra bonus materials, deleted scenes, uncut camera angles, sneak peeks at those things as they're coming out, all of this stuff. So above and beyond the normal expectations, and it is truly the best way to support us.
It keeps our lights on and allows us to continue diving into new and unexplored mysteries every single week. So thank you all so much in advance. Go head over there. But. Without further ado, Fredo, I think I need to take you back to 1977. It's time to figure out, were we contacted intentionally or otherwise by aliens?
The wow signal, as I've kind of hinted, it refers to a strong narrow band radio signal that was detected on August 15th, 1977. To be specific, this particular signal was detected at 1420 megahertz. So 1420 megahertz.
and we'll talk more about that specific radio frequency as we move into the investigation but it's important to note that it was very specifically on that band because of course the radio bandwidth is all over the place you kind of know it casually as you move through radio stations those i think are kilohertz but suffice to say you you passively know about these things
Now, the signal itself was recorded at Ohio State University by their telescope with the apt name Big Ear, essentially just one honking ear listening up to space. Yep. And radio telescopes are used to detect and map radio waves that are emitted by celestial objects. This allows scientists to study things that we can't see with the human eye.
Now, if you're going to forgive me a few moments here of extrapolating out some data and geeking out, I have an image for you provided by NASA.
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Chapter 6: What natural phenomena could explain the Wow! Signal?
This is the first one I want to point your attention to. Task Force, they will be in the video uploads on Spotify, YouTube, and also on our social. You might not know this, but the visible light spectrum is such a tiny sliver of the entire electromagnetic spectrum. If you look at the pretty basic image, it doesn't have any of like the wavelengths on it.
It's a rudimentary version, but you can see the tiny sliver right there in the middle ultraviolet X-ray gamma ray. Those get more high energy, shorter wavelength. And then once you get into infrared, which we experience as heat, and then you get up into the microwaves, then you get into radio waves, which are the longest wavelengths.
Dang. Okay. Yeah, no, I see it. And we just have that little tiny sliver.
Oh, yeah.
And then we have tools that like, you know, make heat visible to us and things like that. So that's also very interesting.
Absolutely. I mean, like during a ghost hunt, you might see people with like it cuts to a rainbow looking camera and it's showing you heat, right? So something that's cold might be dark purple or blue and something that's hot might be red, yellow or otherwise. That's yeah, exactly a way to visualize the otherwise invisible portion of the infrared spectrum.
I think it's the same for the James Webb Space Telescope, which I think looks entirely within the infrared spectrum.
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Chapter 7: How do comets relate to the Wow! Signal theory?
And so when you see these beautiful images, from NASA, from the JWST. It is infrared converted into colors. It's colorized, I believe, so that way we can understand it. But otherwise, like it's in a realm of electromagnetic wavelengths that we just can't see with our eyes. And so
You know, when you look up at the sky with your naked eye, maybe through a telescope, you're literally missing 99.99% of the universe because we see, let me do the math, we see with our eyes 0.0035% of the electromagnetic spectrum. That's not a lot at all. Not at all. That's just how we evolved.
But yeah, so suffice to say, there's a huge band and these radio telescopes allow us to study objects in space beyond what we would see with our eyes. And so that's why we have sensors for all portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Today, we're just going to be sitting way over in the long wavelength territory of radio.
Okay, so the signal was captured at Ohio State University, Big Ear, and this signal was detected in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius near a group of stars called Chi Sagittarii. This is in deep space. I forgot I actually had a second image to go along with what I was talking about. But if you take a look at this second image here, you'll see why ground-based
dishes might be listening to radio waves because they're one of the few wavelengths that can actually penetrate our atmosphere in addition to the visible light spectrum oh wow this is really cool just to see like the spectrum and then the different devices that we use and then also the heightened atmosphere yeah oh that's a nice visual
you know that's why we got satellites up there to analyze other things because our atmosphere helps block out many of these wavelengths that would be quite harmful to us obviously not all of them some ultraviolet does get down here and give us our sunburns but right thankfully we're not being pummeled by x-ray and gamma rays thanks to the atmosphere but the other image i wanted to show you is the constellation and where this signal seems to have come from thanks to phys.org
So this is the night sky as it would have been seen on August 15th, 1977.
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Chapter 8: What are the implications of the Wow! Signal for the search for extraterrestrial life?
It was buff scientist stuff, man. We're getting into it. Constellations and Sagittarius, quote unquote, teapot. You know how the sky was on August 15th. That's wild that we can go back and like, what was it? What did the sky look like on this day?
Yeah. And you think it's simple, right? You're like, well, just unwind where the planet was in relation to the sun. And there you go. But you also have to remember our solar system is flat.
flinging around the galaxy the galaxy itself is flinging around space and so you know you have to kind of backtrack a little bit you know obviously everything moves relatively slowly because it's all so far apart but i just love it so yeah you can basically back out where they were aiming at that specific time that the signal came in.
And this is one of the main areas that the signal is theorized to have come from. So in total, this very powerful signal came and hit the big ear and it lasted 72 seconds and it was picked up on only one of 50 possible channels. Channels in this context refers to the different frequencies or frequency bands that this telescope was able to listen to.
And I think it's very interesting that it lasted 72 seconds. We'll talk about why in a second. But also the fact that it was so focused on one frequency, it wasn't like a burst across multiple. All of this will go kind of hand in hand with our investigation and our theories as to what might have created this signal. Why was it so focused and why was it so strong?
But like I said, it's important to note that the signal's duration was 72 seconds due to the physical limitations of this dish. It wasn't that the burst. Yeah, it's not that they're listening to the sky and for 72 seconds this thing came in, but rather it's the way the telescope is aimed at the sky.
So this telescope can only aim up and down, but it scans the night sky purely because it's affixed to the ground. purely by way of Earth's rotation. And when it's looking out into space, I'll give you the technical term, it's looking at about 15 arc minutes wide. And to give you context, that's about looking at half the moon's width.
So if you were looking up to space through a straw almost, that's what this telescope is doing. It's listening to a space half as wide as the moon is to the eye, kind of.
Yeah, I didn't even think about that. It's got to be locked into that signal. And it's, you know, Earth is rotating and whatnot. Oh, man. At that point, maybe we are missing a bunch of signals. Oh, my gosh. Because we're just not locked into that specific specific sliver in the sky at that specific... Oh my goodness, I didn't think about that. That makes so much sense though.
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