WEBVTT - How the Wow! Signal Works 0:00:01.000 --> 0:00:04.440 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works 0:00:04.480 --> 0:00:13.240 dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, 0:00:13.320 --> 0:00:16.040 There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry So it's 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:21.599 Stuff you Should Know. Wow. Uh, first of all, I 0:00:21.640 --> 0:00:28.200 think we should go ahead and apologize to eight Stuff 0:00:28.240 --> 0:00:30.560 you Should Know fans. And there were more than who 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:34.000 have already heard this. Yeah, we went to the World 0:00:34.040 --> 0:00:36.680 Science Festival. We were invited to the World Science Festival 0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:39.239 in New York City, and we want to give a 0:00:39.240 --> 0:00:41.839 little special shout out to Ben in the Ace Hotel 0:00:41.880 --> 0:00:43.879 for putting us up while we were there. Yeah. We 0:00:43.920 --> 0:00:48.480 did a live podcast short form on Washington Square Park 0:00:48.520 --> 0:00:51.200 on a Sunday afternoon. It was kind of a neat thing. 0:00:51.320 --> 0:00:53.360 So um, yeah, I hate everybody who came out to 0:00:53.360 --> 0:00:56.200 see us. We appreciated the support. Yeah, actually I thought 0:00:56.240 --> 0:00:58.960 I knew everyone by name. There were actual Stuff you 0:00:58.960 --> 0:01:01.880 Should Know fans. Yeah, I was gonna apologize to them directly. 0:01:02.080 --> 0:01:05.600 There were some people who clearly were not familiar with us, 0:01:05.600 --> 0:01:09.840 and we're just mind blown walking around glazed look in 0:01:09.880 --> 0:01:14.119 their face. They look kind of defeated. I was like, oh, 0:01:14.240 --> 0:01:16.200 you like Stuff you Should Know? Now. Yeah. I had 0:01:16.240 --> 0:01:17.640 a couple of people come up and be like, hey, 0:01:17.640 --> 0:01:19.800 what do you guys do? This is neat and said, well, 0:01:19.920 --> 0:01:21.679 you just saw a short version of it. My friend, 0:01:21.760 --> 0:01:26.040 if you want a lot more side stories and anecdotes, 0:01:26.120 --> 0:01:29.400 then tune into the long version. Yeah, we had twenty minutes. 0:01:29.440 --> 0:01:31.280 We had twenty minutes that boy, we had to get 0:01:31.280 --> 0:01:33.960 down to business. Didn't and we did too. It's not bad. 0:01:34.000 --> 0:01:36.360 We didn't talk about tire stores or anything like that. 0:01:36.440 --> 0:01:41.800 We just talked about the Wow signal. Yeah, this is um. 0:01:41.920 --> 0:01:44.440 I think this is fascinating stuff because this is something 0:01:45.080 --> 0:01:48.720 that even the most hardened skeptic hasn't been able to 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:51.760 fully debunk. Yeah, that's that's a good point. It's pretty 0:01:51.800 --> 0:01:55.880 neat that you know they're they're upset, probably, so we 0:01:55.920 --> 0:01:58.400 should say that. We keep saying the wild signal, and 0:01:58.480 --> 0:02:04.600 Chuck's talking about skeptics and everything. There is evidence of 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:10.880 a potential transmission from an alien civilization here on Earth, 0:02:11.280 --> 0:02:14.799 and it's been here on Earth, printed out sitting in 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:19.440 the Ohio State University Archives since the nineteen seventies. Yeah, 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:21.720 and potential is the key word there. I think that's 0:02:21.720 --> 0:02:24.720 where most skeptics head will pop off. But you got 0:02:24.760 --> 0:02:27.440 you gotta say potential you and I did. Yeah, I 0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:30.320 don't want anybody's head to pop off, you know. Um, 0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:34.760 the thing is, like you said, Chuck, no skeptic has 0:02:34.800 --> 0:02:38.680 been able to say, here's your explanation, dumb, dumb, And 0:02:38.720 --> 0:02:41.079 they've tried. There have been plenty of explanations, but every 0:02:41.120 --> 0:02:48.560 single one has been systematically addressed and reduced the rubble basically. Um, 0:02:48.720 --> 0:02:52.000 so the whole thing finds its roots. Um, like I 0:02:52.040 --> 0:02:54.440 said back in the seventies, but actually goes further back 0:02:54.480 --> 0:02:59.080 than that. There's a lot of Um. There's been a 0:02:59.120 --> 0:03:02.760 lot of talk starting in the twentieth century over aliens. 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:05.800 Are we the other other people? Are we the only 0:03:05.880 --> 0:03:10.120 life out there? Um? Are there other people on other planets? 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:15.080 And if so, can we communicate with them? And astronomers 0:03:15.120 --> 0:03:18.280 started crunching the numbers and doing the math and said, 0:03:19.400 --> 0:03:22.200 we basically have two things we can do here. We 0:03:22.280 --> 0:03:25.639 can try to go visit aliens and look for them 0:03:25.680 --> 0:03:32.000 in the flesh, expensive, expensive, and potentially impossible. It's like 0:03:32.000 --> 0:03:34.280 looking for a needle in a haystack. Yeah, but also 0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:37.800 it's the closest, um, the closest planet to us is 0:03:37.880 --> 0:03:42.120 like a few hundred light years away. I believe four 0:03:42.200 --> 0:03:47.920 hundred plus, right, which means that, um, we take four 0:03:48.000 --> 0:03:50.600 hundreds something years traveling at the speed of light to 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:55.040 reach that planet. So we couldn't go find them. Instead, 0:03:55.280 --> 0:03:58.360 we decided that we would try to listen out to 0:03:58.400 --> 0:04:01.320 see if anybody was really leasing any transmissions out there 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:06.520 and find traces of alien civilizations that way. Yeah, and um, 0:04:06.600 --> 0:04:10.160 did we do a show on set. No, we've talked 0:04:10.200 --> 0:04:13.040 about it before, all right, the Search for Extra Oh yes, 0:04:13.360 --> 0:04:18.480 did we? We did. I don't remember when it came in. 0:04:18.920 --> 0:04:21.120 We definitely have talked about it before. Now that you 0:04:21.120 --> 0:04:25.320 say that, I think with one of our south By 0:04:25.360 --> 0:04:27.840 Southwest or comic cons might have had something to do 0:04:27.880 --> 0:04:33.760 with Oh yeah, the UFOs SSETTI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:37.159 It's not a single organization, although there is the SETI 0:04:37.200 --> 0:04:41.080 Institute now since the early nineteen eighties. But SET is 0:04:41.080 --> 0:04:46.039 a bunch of different groups that um are. They're not 0:04:46.160 --> 0:04:50.599 tinfoil hat wearing crack pots who are bounded determined to 0:04:50.600 --> 0:04:53.120 find if there's life out there, but they're open minded 0:04:53.120 --> 0:04:56.559 folks that say, if there isn't life out there, let's 0:04:57.160 --> 0:04:59.159 get ahead of the game here and listen out for 0:04:59.200 --> 0:05:01.240 him and see if they're trying to say something to 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:04.560 us right there. They're basically people who say the there's 0:05:04.600 --> 0:05:09.400 just too many stars out there that have planets and 0:05:09.440 --> 0:05:14.080 that have are potentially habitable to life for us. It 0:05:14.240 --> 0:05:17.480 just it just it boggles their mind to think that 0:05:17.520 --> 0:05:21.240 we are the only living beings. And they're scientists, right, 0:05:21.279 --> 0:05:24.880 And to these scientists the much more logical conclusions that 0:05:24.920 --> 0:05:28.320 were one of many um civilizations out there, and so 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:35.000 they have dedicated their their astronomical talents to searching for that. Yeah, 0:05:35.000 --> 0:05:37.800 and this all started happening in the early nineteen seventies 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:40.440 and Earnest and uh, I think it actually started in 0:05:40.440 --> 0:05:44.680 the sixties and Earnest. But with the Big Ear it 0:05:44.760 --> 0:05:49.360 was in the seventies, their steady program, that's right, nineteen 0:05:49.400 --> 0:05:54.120 seventy three, the Ohio State University Radio Observatory. I love 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:57.640 that laugh every time. Um, they have something called the 0:05:57.640 --> 0:06:00.320 Big Ear, or had something called the Big Ear. Yeah, 0:06:00.320 --> 0:06:02.359 they needed a golf course, though, yes they did, so 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:04.960 they got rid of the Big Year. Even worse than that, Um, 0:06:05.000 --> 0:06:10.200 the Big Ear Radio Telescope Ohio State was demolished, not 0:06:10.440 --> 0:06:13.440 to build the golf course. But to expand an existing 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:16.840 golf course, we need another nine holes, right, we need 0:06:16.880 --> 0:06:19.960 another clubhouse. Well, I think the Big Year had seen 0:06:20.000 --> 0:06:22.160 its best days by that point, So don't feel bad 0:06:22.200 --> 0:06:23.840 for the Big Year. I still feel bad for the 0:06:23.839 --> 0:06:27.440 Big Year. So nineteen seventy three, the Big Ears starts 0:06:27.440 --> 0:06:32.400 scanning listening for stuff out in outer space, hence the name, 0:06:32.560 --> 0:06:37.800 and UM what would happen is because it was seventy three, Uh, 0:06:37.839 --> 0:06:40.440 it would print stuff out on a dot matrix printer 0:06:41.160 --> 0:06:45.279 and UH student would uh student assistant would take that 0:06:45.320 --> 0:06:48.440 print out of of what it was listening to and 0:06:48.480 --> 0:06:53.360 take it to another volunteer, UM teachers, professors, and they 0:06:53.400 --> 0:06:57.440 would just basically look at all these numbers. Yeah, page 0:06:57.440 --> 0:06:59.760 by page by page. If you've ever seen the wild signal, 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:04.720 you it's just numbers ones, twos, maybe a three here there. Yeah, 0:07:04.720 --> 0:07:08.359 it's the level of background noise in space exactly. So, um, 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:12.120 A one is blip a radio transmission that was one 0:07:12.200 --> 0:07:16.880 time the intensity of the normal background noise in space 0:07:16.960 --> 0:07:20.480 on a particular frequency. Right, A one is nothing like 0:07:20.520 --> 0:07:23.080 there's ones all over the place all the time. There's ones, 0:07:23.120 --> 0:07:27.200 twos and threes. Yeah, very common stuff. Um. And so 0:07:27.360 --> 0:07:30.920 this these these poor astronomers who were donating their time 0:07:31.240 --> 0:07:37.480 to the bigger telescope. We're basically they were the the 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:42.440 They were analyzing the stuff with their eyes. Yeah, there 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:45.560 wasn't like a computer program they spit it into. They 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:48.800 looked at this computer print out sheet after sheet after sheet, right, 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:52.320 So for they would look at a whole night's scan 0:07:53.080 --> 0:07:57.600 of deep space from a radio telescope, again with their 0:07:57.640 --> 0:08:02.120 eyes going over sheets and heets of computer paper, dot matrix, 0:08:02.200 --> 0:08:05.559 printer paper, and UM, that's what this guy named Jerry Aman, 0:08:05.640 --> 0:08:09.560 who was an astronomer at Ohio State, was doing UM 0:08:09.640 --> 0:08:13.559 on August eighteen, nineteen seventy seven. He was looking over 0:08:13.960 --> 0:08:18.360 some stuff from three days before. Yeah, and so he's 0:08:18.400 --> 0:08:21.160 scanning all the stuff and there's ones, twos, and threes, 0:08:21.200 --> 0:08:24.760 and he's you know, he's watching uh, Love American Style 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:27.560 on TV and eating his TV dinner and he's bored 0:08:27.600 --> 0:08:31.320 out of his mind love American stuff and he's bored 0:08:31.320 --> 0:08:34.959 out of his skull. And then UM, well here's another 0:08:34.960 --> 0:08:37.880 important thing to point out, because it was also nineteen 0:08:37.920 --> 0:08:41.720 seventy three, that was the seventy seven. At this point, 0:08:41.760 --> 0:08:46.200 they didn't have UM double digit print outs. It just 0:08:46.240 --> 0:08:49.760 went one through nine and then started with the letter A, B, C, 0:08:50.000 --> 0:08:53.520 D AS ten, eleven, twelve and so on, right exactly. 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:57.800 So he's reading this stuff and he sees six e 0:08:58.120 --> 0:09:03.000 q U J five, which means the transmission at its 0:09:03.000 --> 0:09:06.600 peak of you peaked at thirty times louder than anything 0:09:06.600 --> 0:09:09.679 they had ever seen before. Then the normal background noise, 0:09:10.040 --> 0:09:13.160 and he circled it and put wow exclamation point on 0:09:13.200 --> 0:09:16.040 the paper. And that's why it's the Wow signal, exactly. 0:09:16.400 --> 0:09:17.960 And this is a big deal. I mean, like, in 0:09:18.040 --> 0:09:22.600 this whole huge ream of dot matrix paper filled with 0:09:22.679 --> 0:09:25.560 ones and twos and maybe a three here there, there's 0:09:25.600 --> 0:09:30.360 a you standing in the middle of this string which 0:09:30.360 --> 0:09:32.960 was high. Yeah. I mean six alone would be like whoa, 0:09:33.000 --> 0:09:35.200 this is kind of significant. This thing went up to you, 0:09:36.000 --> 0:09:38.520 and like you said, he circled it and wrote wow 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:42.080 next to him. It became the Wow signal, and um, 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:46.800 almost immediately they started investigating this thing. Sure, And there 0:09:46.840 --> 0:09:50.080 are a lot of details to the Wow signal that 0:09:50.280 --> 0:09:53.160 are make it even more impressive than just the fact 0:09:53.160 --> 0:09:55.760 that it peaked at you, started at six and ended 0:09:55.760 --> 0:09:58.040 at five and peaked at you. There's a lot of 0:09:58.080 --> 0:10:01.840 different aspects of the Wow signal that make people say, 0:10:01.920 --> 0:10:06.000 what in the name of God is this? And we 0:10:06.040 --> 0:10:24.000 will start getting those details right after this break. So, Chuck, 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:28.600 we were talking about how the wild signal looks on 0:10:29.440 --> 0:10:33.200 dot matrix papers six e q u J five, and 0:10:33.240 --> 0:10:35.559 that means that at its peak it goes from six 0:10:35.600 --> 0:10:38.720 times the normal background noise all the way up to 0:10:38.880 --> 0:10:41.800 thirty times and then back down to five times the 0:10:41.840 --> 0:10:47.440 normal background noise over what we know over seventy two seconds, Yes, 0:10:47.840 --> 0:10:52.040 which is very significant. It turns out so um. The 0:10:52.120 --> 0:10:54.360 Big Ear telescope, we should say a little bit more 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:56.559 about it was a crowds telescope. It was built in 0:10:56.600 --> 0:11:01.400 the sixties and it didn't move it um eavesdropped on 0:11:02.840 --> 0:11:09.520 the electromagnetic radio spectrum UM coming from outer space. Eaves 0:11:09.600 --> 0:11:12.360 dropped on it. But it used the rotation of the 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:16.079 Earth to move it. Yeah, it didn't pan its little 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:18.880 big ear back and forth. It wasn't a show off, No, 0:11:19.040 --> 0:11:21.920 it just stayed fixed. The rotation the Earth very slowly 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:26.120 would pick up a new patch of Earth at the 0:11:26.200 --> 0:11:28.800 rate of the Earth spin right. So um, the big 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:30.760 ears the sky at the rate of the Earth spin right, 0:11:30.920 --> 0:11:33.440 and so it's just pointing out there in deep space, 0:11:33.760 --> 0:11:36.400 and as the Earth rotates, it would move the big 0:11:36.400 --> 0:11:41.680 ears field of reception I guess across any given point 0:11:41.720 --> 0:11:46.920 in the sky over a seventy two second period. And 0:11:46.960 --> 0:11:49.800 it just so happens that the six e q u 0:11:50.000 --> 0:11:55.440 J five wild signal transmission was seventy two seconds, which 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:59.160 suggests something very important here, Chuck. It suggests that the 0:11:59.160 --> 0:12:02.040 wild signal came from a fixed point in the sky 0:12:02.800 --> 0:12:05.640 that was staying in one place, and the Big Year 0:12:06.080 --> 0:12:08.319 just swept past it over the course of its normal 0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:11.559 seventy two seconds. Yeah, And uh, I liken it to 0:12:11.679 --> 0:12:16.240 like if you're driving through the desert listening to your radio. Uh, 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:19.960 your signal, the further you are from that radio transmitter 0:12:20.720 --> 0:12:23.240 or that radio station is going to be pretty faint. 0:12:23.600 --> 0:12:25.800 And then as you get closer and have that direct signal, 0:12:25.800 --> 0:12:28.559 it's gonna peak. And then as you drive further past it, 0:12:28.559 --> 0:12:31.679 it's gonna get more faint again. And that's what shape 0:12:31.800 --> 0:12:33.959 that this wild signal took. It took the shape of 0:12:33.960 --> 0:12:36.240 a pyramid if you graph it out. And I believe 0:12:36.320 --> 0:12:38.920 that's the Doppler effect because I always hear the Doppler 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:42.320 effect being explained by how an ambulance siren sounds far 0:12:42.360 --> 0:12:45.200 away and then gets louder as it gets closer, and 0:12:45.200 --> 0:12:49.400 then it gets, you know, weaker, the further way you get. Yeah, well, 0:12:49.559 --> 0:12:52.439 it also changed his pitch though, isn't that the Doppler effect? 0:12:52.559 --> 0:12:55.400 I think so. It's not just loudness. It's like er 0:12:56.240 --> 0:13:01.680 er er. If you're in England, did you change pitch 0:13:01.800 --> 0:13:04.960 just then? Yeah, you didn't hear any difference. No, you 0:13:05.000 --> 0:13:08.320 didn't hear it go down in volume. You didn't hear 0:13:08.320 --> 0:13:11.959 it go down in in tone? No? Wow? Did you really? 0:13:12.200 --> 0:13:15.280 Are you tone deaf? I don't think so. It would 0:13:15.320 --> 0:13:20.560 explain a lot as far as karaoke goes. Do you 0:13:20.559 --> 0:13:25.040 sind karaoke? Did you recently? What do you say? Um? 0:13:26.040 --> 0:13:28.240 I got some songs here there? You can't You can't 0:13:28.240 --> 0:13:32.080 tell us one of them? Is that too revealing? No? 0:13:32.400 --> 0:13:35.959 Let me think of one of my karaoke songs. My 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:39.760 big move is always under pressure and someone's always like, oh, 0:13:39.880 --> 0:13:41.319 i'll do it with you'll do the bowie part. I 0:13:41.400 --> 0:13:44.480 might not do both parts. I recently sang um I 0:13:44.559 --> 0:13:46.680 have a tiger. Oh, yeah, there you go. I have 0:13:46.760 --> 0:13:49.320 a big problem though, with my karaoke stuff. A lot 0:13:49.360 --> 0:13:52.199 of the songs that I pick are just slightly out 0:13:52.200 --> 0:13:55.679 of the key that I can comfortably achieve. Well, if 0:13:55.720 --> 0:13:59.000 you're picking eighties rock, then yeah, but you would think 0:13:59.360 --> 0:14:01.959 the Tiger that the the guy's not singing that high picture, 0:14:01.960 --> 0:14:03.520 although I know he hits that high note and I 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:06.440 knew that, But from the start that guy starts out 0:14:06.480 --> 0:14:09.640 like a little higher than I can go. So it's 0:14:09.679 --> 0:14:13.360 just it's not necessarily a treat for everyone around me 0:14:13.440 --> 0:14:17.040 when I'm singing karaoke, because I accidentally every once in 0:14:17.040 --> 0:14:18.680 a while I have a night where like every song 0:14:18.720 --> 0:14:21.840 I pick is right in my wheelhouse and I'm nailing him. 0:14:21.880 --> 0:14:26.320 But for the most part, it's uh yeah, I woarrible 0:14:26.360 --> 0:14:28.120 a little bit. I guess I think the key to 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:30.160 karaoke is to get your songs that you know you 0:14:30.160 --> 0:14:32.680 can do and kind of stick to those. Well, I'm 0:14:32.800 --> 0:14:36.560 I'm not like a pro. Well you know, uh like 0:14:36.600 --> 0:14:39.360 I did Foreigners Cold as Ice one time by accident 0:14:39.840 --> 0:14:41.920 because the song I wanted to do, I think, under pressure, 0:14:42.000 --> 0:14:44.200 someone had done and I was they were calling me. 0:14:44.240 --> 0:14:45.680 I was like, oh, well, I guess I'll just do this, 0:14:46.160 --> 0:14:48.840 and the karaoke guy hit in Philadelphia said, well, I 0:14:48.840 --> 0:14:52.360 hope you're hope you can have a vice for your testicles, 0:14:52.840 --> 0:14:56.440 but you didn't say testicles why? And then I remembered 0:14:56.680 --> 0:15:00.480 how high that song was. It is. It's a disaster 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:04.640 that I have the Tigers not that far off. Um 0:15:04.880 --> 0:15:08.640 and I should give a plug here to um. Sig 0:15:08.640 --> 0:15:12.920 Gold's Request Room. If you're in New York City, you 0:15:12.960 --> 0:15:16.520 should go to sig Gold's Request Room. It's on one 0:15:16.520 --> 0:15:19.200 of those private karaoke twenty six. It's not private. It's 0:15:19.200 --> 0:15:24.040 just a piano karaoke bar, not private room. But it's 0:15:24.080 --> 0:15:27.480 a back room with like a heavy curtain, so there's 0:15:27.480 --> 0:15:30.200 a sense that it's private, but it's not private. It's 0:15:30.280 --> 0:15:32.720 just you just show up and but it's live. It's 0:15:32.720 --> 0:15:34.880 a guy playing piano instead of a backing track. Yeah, 0:15:34.880 --> 0:15:37.520 it's a guy named Joe McGuinty. He's a very good 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:41.080 talented musician. He's actually a friend of you, Mace, and 0:15:41.080 --> 0:15:44.640 he used to play for the Psychedelic First and he 0:15:44.960 --> 0:15:48.200 now he's one of the owners of Sig Gold's Request Room. Man, 0:15:48.240 --> 0:15:50.120 that place is gonna blow up now, I hope so 0:15:50.200 --> 0:15:53.880 it should. It's a lot of fun. Yeah, Alright, boy, 0:15:53.920 --> 0:15:56.880 that was a good segue or not segue, because that 0:15:56.960 --> 0:16:00.560 leads to nothing. No, it leads to how do we 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:05.240 get on that Doppler effect? Yeah? Exactly, So, uh, let's 0:16:05.280 --> 0:16:08.720 talk about set again. Let's bring this all back home 0:16:09.280 --> 0:16:12.840 set or the different STIs around the world. Decided at 0:16:12.840 --> 0:16:15.600 one point that UM, like you said, a good way 0:16:15.640 --> 0:16:19.360 to find transmission might be to listen out for it. 0:16:19.680 --> 0:16:22.960 And if we're gonna listen, UM, what would be the 0:16:23.000 --> 0:16:28.520 most likely UM radio station that they would transmit? Well, yeah, 0:16:28.560 --> 0:16:30.800 I mean like and of course it's not a radio station. 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:33.240 I'd say that as a joke, but but that was 0:16:33.280 --> 0:16:37.080 the first That was the first. Um. That wasn't the 0:16:37.080 --> 0:16:41.400 first thing they thought of. Like if if you say, okay, 0:16:41.480 --> 0:16:45.040 we can't go to distant planets to start searching for aliens, 0:16:45.200 --> 0:16:48.720 there's just it's just too far away. We would all 0:16:48.800 --> 0:16:51.280 die on the way there. Right, we're gonna wait for 0:16:51.320 --> 0:16:57.080 them to come down and play a mood at Devil's Tower. Instead, 0:16:57.640 --> 0:17:00.920 we're gonna look for traces of them. Yeah, how can 0:17:00.960 --> 0:17:04.360 we find But that were listening wasn't immediately the thing. 0:17:04.440 --> 0:17:07.280 They started thinking like in different ways that you could 0:17:07.280 --> 0:17:12.080 find evidence of alien civilizations. And finally what they settled 0:17:12.119 --> 0:17:16.800 on was there, if you're an alien civilization, you are 0:17:16.960 --> 0:17:20.840 probably familiar with the electromagnetic spectrum, So let's start looking there. 0:17:21.760 --> 0:17:24.600 And they started looking at the electromagnetic spectrum to see 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:28.040 maybe where you would find some sort of evidence of 0:17:28.080 --> 0:17:31.720 alien civilization. And they thought, how about the radio band. Yeah, 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:35.080 there were a couple of physicists from Cornell in the sixties, 0:17:35.119 --> 0:17:40.800 Philip Morrison and Giesipicconi, who reckoned that, you know, they're 0:17:40.800 --> 0:17:43.320 going to find a common language. They're going to broadcast 0:17:43.440 --> 0:17:48.840 on what's like the most common language of the universe, 0:17:50.000 --> 0:17:58.360 hydrogen Espanola, espaniola. Not quite uh. I'm sort of being 0:17:58.400 --> 0:18:00.359 fun here with like saying, it's a radio stay and 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:03.600 it's a line. But hydrogen is the most abundant common 0:18:03.680 --> 0:18:06.720 element in the universe, and there is a hydrogen line 0:18:06.840 --> 0:18:10.360 hydrogen frequency, so they figured this may be a good 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:14.639 place to start listening. Yeah, and and um, Hydrogen's protons flip. 0:18:14.800 --> 0:18:19.640 They change spin pretty pretty much all the time, right, 0:18:20.359 --> 0:18:24.040 And as they flip and change their spin, they admit 0:18:24.080 --> 0:18:27.680 a little bit, just a tiny teensy bit of electromagnetic radiation, 0:18:27.920 --> 0:18:31.359 like a little glow right, and that the frequency of 0:18:31.440 --> 0:18:35.240 that emission is at four hundred and twenty mega hurts. 0:18:36.080 --> 0:18:39.720 Since hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe 0:18:40.200 --> 0:18:44.160 and hydrogen is flipping all of the time, it's also 0:18:44.200 --> 0:18:48.840 emitting this radiation all the time, which makes twenty mega 0:18:48.920 --> 0:18:55.200 hurts the most common frequency on the entire electro magnetic spectrum. 0:18:55.320 --> 0:18:59.119 Oh hydrogen all the time. And again the city researchers 0:18:59.119 --> 0:19:04.040 Philip Morris and just set be um and I know 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:07.480 it's Philip Morrison. I was just making a show, a 0:19:07.560 --> 0:19:11.879 tobacco joke. They have their hands and everything. Um. Since 0:19:11.960 --> 0:19:15.960 these guys said they would probably transmit somewhere on the 0:19:16.080 --> 0:19:20.760 radio spectrum, um, and they would probably be familiar with 0:19:21.080 --> 0:19:25.880 radio spectrums and electromagnetism, they would also probably know, just 0:19:25.920 --> 0:19:29.200 like we just figured out, that the most common frequency 0:19:29.240 --> 0:19:33.280 in the entire universe, no matter where you are, mega hurts. 0:19:33.560 --> 0:19:36.439 So maybe this would be a really good place to 0:19:36.640 --> 0:19:40.439 listen out for alien radio transmissions. That's right, and the 0:19:40.440 --> 0:19:45.240 wild signal was broadcast at four point four or five 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:48.280 five six mega hurts right in the middle of the 0:19:48.359 --> 0:19:53.199 hydrogen line, right on the most common frequency in the 0:19:53.400 --> 0:19:58.399 entire universe. We found in nineteen seven radio transmission that 0:19:58.520 --> 0:20:02.360 was thirty times strong or than the normal background noise 0:20:03.040 --> 0:20:06.640 on that frequency. That's right, and that makes uh made 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:11.800 scientists go holy cow or wow. That even made skeptics go, oh, 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:16.080 but what's this all about? Exactly the shape of it, 0:20:16.119 --> 0:20:19.880 like we talked about the pyramid shape, um, is exactly 0:20:19.880 --> 0:20:22.399 what you would expect. So that made everyone sit up 0:20:22.400 --> 0:20:24.800 and go all right, well there's also that. And then 0:20:25.040 --> 0:20:28.159 the sharpness, I know is the third big reason that 0:20:28.480 --> 0:20:31.440 it just doesn't fit in right or it does fit 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:33.840 in as an alien transmission. So there are tons of 0:20:33.920 --> 0:20:39.560 like um, very powerful bursts here. They're radio transmissions like quasars, 0:20:39.600 --> 0:20:45.280 emit um radio transmissions and UM satellites. There's well, there's 0:20:45.280 --> 0:20:48.120 a lot of natural ones. I mean the natural ones 0:20:48.160 --> 0:20:51.959 that are very messy. They get spread across the band, 0:20:52.400 --> 0:20:55.919 the electromagnetic pants. So um, if you got like a 0:20:56.000 --> 0:20:58.639 burst from like a quasar or something like that, you 0:20:59.240 --> 0:21:02.400 found it through the big year, you're going to it's 0:21:02.400 --> 0:21:06.560 gonna turn up on say like channel fourteen forty four, 0:21:06.600 --> 0:21:10.440 it's going to spill over across the band. They're very messy. 0:21:10.760 --> 0:21:13.480 One of the things that really makes the Wild signals 0:21:13.520 --> 0:21:18.960 so significant is that it was um tuned. Basically, it 0:21:19.000 --> 0:21:22.000 appears to have been tuned because it came through only 0:21:22.200 --> 0:21:26.520 on the fourteen frequency. It didn't spill over, and the 0:21:26.560 --> 0:21:29.959 Big Year was listening to fifty channels. So imagine like 0:21:30.000 --> 0:21:32.760 your radio is tuned, or you have fifty radios tuned 0:21:32.800 --> 0:21:41.159 to and so on right up to fourteen whatever that 0:21:41.240 --> 0:21:45.399 goes to fifty channels out Um, the wild signal only 0:21:45.440 --> 0:21:48.679 came through on the fouency right then, So you've got 0:21:48.720 --> 0:21:50.560 the sharpness, You've got the fact that it was right 0:21:50.600 --> 0:21:52.760 in the middle of the hydrogen line, you have that 0:21:52.800 --> 0:21:55.680 pyramid shape, and everyone is wondering what the heck is 0:21:55.720 --> 0:21:58.880 going on? And uh, right after this message, we will 0:21:58.920 --> 0:22:01.199 talk about a few reasons why I may not be 0:22:01.240 --> 0:22:18.480 an alien transmission. All right, So we've made a bit 0:22:18.520 --> 0:22:21.800 of a case that there's something hinky that happened on 0:22:21.840 --> 0:22:29.640 August seven, Right, Yeah, I think so pretty strong case. Um. 0:22:29.680 --> 0:22:31.880 Of course, when you make a case like this, it's 0:22:32.320 --> 0:22:36.840 like they say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Basically, what 0:22:36.880 --> 0:22:40.439 we've ended up with is this is some evidence. So 0:22:40.520 --> 0:22:43.199 you can't make like a full claim that hey, this 0:22:43.280 --> 0:22:45.080 is definitely an alien trying to get in touch with us, 0:22:45.160 --> 0:22:49.240 because all we have is that SEV burst. We haven't 0:22:49.240 --> 0:22:52.080 been able to find it since then. Uh, and we've 0:22:52.119 --> 0:22:56.440 looked or listened, right, and just attending in an unexplained 0:22:56.520 --> 0:23:00.399 radio signal doesn't I mean, it's just it's not like 0:23:00.440 --> 0:23:04.320 the signal said, hey, we're broadcasting to you live from 0:23:04.480 --> 0:23:08.320 Kepler forty three B. We'll be seeing you guys in 0:23:09.800 --> 0:23:12.359 a dr when we come down and take over your 0:23:12.359 --> 0:23:15.720 planets can be a bad day for you. Um. Yeah, 0:23:15.760 --> 0:23:18.520 So there's like you said, that it's not in and 0:23:18.560 --> 0:23:22.239 of itself approven alien signal. But um, there are a 0:23:22.280 --> 0:23:26.679 lot of really unexplainable things that support the idea that 0:23:26.680 --> 0:23:29.960 that's potentially possible. There are a lot of people who 0:23:29.960 --> 0:23:33.080 have tried to put out explanations to the contrary. Right. 0:23:33.840 --> 0:23:36.960 For one, they have gone back and listened to that 0:23:37.440 --> 0:23:40.199 same patch of sky over and over again more than 0:23:40.240 --> 0:23:42.439 a hundred times, and no one's ever picked up the 0:23:42.440 --> 0:23:46.440 wild signal again. Yeah, and I have sure it would 0:23:46.440 --> 0:23:47.960 be nice to go back to that same patch of 0:23:48.000 --> 0:23:51.040 sky and hear it again. But if it takes a 0:23:51.040 --> 0:23:53.160 lot of energy to beam a signal like that from 0:23:53.160 --> 0:23:57.400 deep space it may have been a one off or um. 0:23:57.440 --> 0:24:00.520 Some people have theorized that maybe if you were an 0:24:00.560 --> 0:24:04.119 alien civilization, it takes so much power to broadcast in 0:24:04.160 --> 0:24:08.520 every direction, you might use more of a lighthouse sweeping method, um. 0:24:08.600 --> 0:24:11.399 And so it wouldn't be at that fixed point, you know, 0:24:11.440 --> 0:24:14.560 it's just out there moving across the sky, right and um, 0:24:14.960 --> 0:24:17.520 it just so happens that the big ear and this 0:24:17.640 --> 0:24:22.960 lighthouse radio beacon crossed one another the same Yeah, it's 0:24:23.000 --> 0:24:26.119 just the right time. Um. Yeah, that is a pretty 0:24:26.119 --> 0:24:29.760 good counter explanation or counter argument to that one. Another 0:24:29.800 --> 0:24:33.240 one was that it was, um, it was some sort 0:24:33.280 --> 0:24:38.000 of transmission from Earth projected and reflected off of like 0:24:38.040 --> 0:24:40.560 a piece of space debris. There's a lot of junk 0:24:40.600 --> 0:24:44.000 out in space. You've seen gravity. I've seen gravity. There's 0:24:44.040 --> 0:24:46.240 a lot of space junk out there, and it can 0:24:46.280 --> 0:24:50.119 reflect radio signals. Right. But there's some real problems with 0:24:50.160 --> 0:24:54.720