The mysterious radio signal ‘Wow!’ could have come from a Sun-like star located 1,800 light-years away from Earth, according to a recent study published in the International Journal of Astrobiology.
That radio signal is considerate as the best candidate to be a SETI message (search for extraterrestrial intelligence, according to the acronym in English). The signal was captured for the first and only time for 72 seconds in 1977 by astronomers at the Big Ear Radio Telescope, located in Delaware, Ohio (USA). It was so strong and unusual that when Jerry Ehman, one of the team members, recorded it, he hand-wrote the expression ‘Wow!’ on the paper, which he ended up naming.
“Few attempts have been made to determine the exact location of the ‘WOW!’ due to the difficulty that this implies”, explained the amateur astronomer Alberto Caballero, author of the new study. “Although it was detected at only one of the radio telescope’s two feedhorns, the data was processed in a way that does not allow us to determine which of the feedhorns actually received the signal,” he added.
Caballero examined data collected by the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, looking at two sections of the sky where the signal might have come from. Focusing on G- and K-type stars, which are very similar to the Sun, the astronomer identified one, known as ‘2MASS 19281982-2640123’ and located in the constellation Sagittarius, as the most likely source.
“Even though this star is too far away to send back a response in the form of radio transmission or light, it could be a great target for observations,” he suggested.
The entrance They discover the probable source of the famous alien radio signal ‘Wow!’ was first published in diary TODAY.
