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If there's something you'd like to say to aliens, now's your chance. The Wow! signal, a mysterious radio transmission detected in 1977 that may or may not have come from extraterrestrials, is finally getting a response from humanity. Anyone can contribute his or her two cents — or 140 characters, to be exact — to the cosmic reply via Twitter.

All tweets composed between 8 p.m. EDT Friday (June 29) and 3 a.m. EDT Saturday (June 30) tagged with the hashtag #ChasingUFOs will be rolled into a single message, according to the National Geographic Channel, which is timing the Twitter event to coincide with the premiere of the channel's new series, "Chasing UFOs."

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So why was that seen as a wow message? just characters to me ....

Oh, I always bother about that 6 at the top.

Otherwise, I guess it was analog in nature, like a wave, having no numbers in it.

Is it possible to deduce a possible gaussian score from an analog result if the rest of it (including the pulses) is missing?

So why was that seen as a wow message? just characters to me ....

IIRC it was the overwhelming strength of that signal that was of interest.

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#resist

Seems you are correct, thanks.

The Big Ear radio observatory at Ohio State University picked up the intense 72-second radio transmission coming from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. At its peak, the transmission was 30 times more powerful than ambient radiation from deep space, prompting the volunteer astronomer Jerry Ehman to scrawl "Wow!" next to the data on a computer printout, giving the signal its name.

I would love if the message did repeat itself.

Read about the message:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I would love if the message did repeat itself.

Read about the message:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So would everyone else, except maybe a few disaster freaks.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

It was on TV today, your chance to add your comments to a WOW response.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

I thought that a really strong signal, would indicate that it came from Earth?
Any radio signals we are currently sending into space,would be just above
the background radiation levels by about 50 light years.
I presume therefore that we are looking for similar levels.
If this WOW signal was extraterrestrial the technology and energy used to
produce it would be greatly superior to ours,and it may not be a good idea
to try a focused high energy reply in their direction.


Just a thought !

john3760

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The Italian newspaper La Repubblica says that on August 15 Arecibo will transmit a message sponsored by the National Geographic Society in the direction of the source of the Wow signal.
Tullio

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As for the Wow signal. I seem to read that it has never been analyzed for any intelligence or modulation. In fact, I seem to recall that it was not even recorded. Please correct me if I am wrong on this.

As for the Wow signal. I seem to read that it has never been analyzed for any intelligence or modulation. In fact, I seem to recall that it was not even recorded. Please correct me if I am wrong on this.

And no one ran outside to see if an airplane flew overhead either.

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The signals location wasnt repeated and came from a area that nothing was found,it has moved alot is 27 years@ about 30 miles a second from that point in space to where it is now. This is providing that it wasnt a ship in transit that could change direction..

Personally, I am highly sceptical about this type of message. Has there been any scientific paper and/or technical description on how they suppose to code and send the message at all?

Various parameters must be taken into consideration. Most importantly the time of each bit must be long enough to ensure a high signal/noise ratio. There have been many messages that simply have been sent at such a high bit rate that it is impossible for any receiver to decode the information.

Others were sent in a format that ET can not understand under any circumstances. Or do we assume ET has a MPEG-2 and a JPEG codec installed on his computer and is using the same ASCII tables as us? Therefore it is not possible to decode the meaning of text/image/video files that are transmitted as such. We need a code on which at least some scientists agree that it maybe can be decoded by ET. Such codes are usually based on maths and science in combination with pictures (which are not sent as JPEGs!).

And last but not least the selection of the targets of the transmission is important. The source of the wow signal seems to be a poor choice to me since Tau Sagittarii (the closest star to the signal origin) is a suspected double star. These don't allow for stable orbits of planets. Probably the signal was just a reflection of one of our signals on some debris.

There have only been 5 serious METI attempts so far that took the above points into consideration. Everything else is regarded as pseudo-METI in the scientific community (the main purpose probably being promotion here on earth instead of messaging ET). (source: Classification of interstellar radio messages - Science Direct)

So, unless there will appear a paper or technical description how the signal was sent, I'm going to consider this yet-another pseudo-METI attempt.