WEBVTT - S02 Episode 3 Extra: 6EQUJ5 0:00:10.240 --> 0:00:15.760 Welcome to Unexplained Extra with me Richard McClean smith. For 0:00:15.800 --> 0:00:18.640 the weeks in between episodes, we look at the stories that, 0:00:18.680 --> 0:00:21.120 for one reason or other, didn't make it into the show. 0:00:22.440 --> 0:00:25.959 In last week's episode, The Final Flight, we looked at 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:29.840 the tragic story of Australian Training Corps pilot Fred Valentige 0:00:30.240 --> 0:00:34.320 and his mysterious disappearance one evening in October nineteen seventy eight. 0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:38.920 Fred had been attempting a solo flight across the Bass 0:00:38.960 --> 0:00:41.960 Strait just to the south of Melbourne, Australia, when he 0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:47.440 vanished without a trace. In a famous final communication between 0:00:47.479 --> 0:00:51.000 Fred and air traffic control, it appeared that Fred was 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:56.800 being tracked by a large UFO just prior to his disappearance, if, 0:00:56.960 --> 0:01:00.200 as some believe, Fred had in fact fabricated the event. 0:01:00.680 --> 0:01:03.680 It has been suggested that the Australian release of Steven 0:01:03.720 --> 0:01:07.000 Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind in March of 0:01:07.040 --> 0:01:10.960 that year may have served as a possible source of inspiration. 0:01:12.360 --> 0:01:16.440 Yet only six months previously, something far more fantastical had 0:01:16.440 --> 0:01:19.199 occurred that would no doubt have been noted by Fred, 0:01:19.600 --> 0:01:22.560 a young man with a keen interest in UFOs and 0:01:22.680 --> 0:01:32.760 the hunt for alien life. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence, 0:01:33.200 --> 0:01:37.240 or SETTI, is the term given to humanity's collective attempts 0:01:37.280 --> 0:01:41.559 to find signs of intelligent life in the universe. Of course, 0:01:41.840 --> 0:01:44.039 we may always have looked to the night sky and 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:47.360 wondered whether or not we were alone, but it wasn't 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:51.440 until a remarkable discovery confirmed in eighteen eighty seven, that 0:01:51.520 --> 0:01:53.640 we began to conceive of a way in which we 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:58.040 might actually begin to find out. In eighteen sixty four, 0:01:58.240 --> 0:02:05.000 Scottish physicist James Maxwell proposed his groundbreaking theory that electricity, magnetism, 0:02:05.040 --> 0:02:09.040 and light were in fact all manifestations of the same phenomenon. 0:02:10.280 --> 0:02:13.919 His findings, published as a paper titled A Dynamical Theory 0:02:14.000 --> 0:02:18.000 of the Electromagnetic Field, marked a paradigm shift in our 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:22.760 understanding of the laws of the universe, but also gave 0:02:22.840 --> 0:02:26.040 us the means with which to listen to it. For 0:02:26.160 --> 0:02:29.959 it was in Maxwell's understanding of electromagnetism that the concept 0:02:30.000 --> 0:02:34.520 of radio waves themselves a type of electromagnetic radiation, was 0:02:34.600 --> 0:02:40.160 first theorized. However, as is often the case, the maths 0:02:40.240 --> 0:02:43.160 would predate the technology needed to prove the theory. By 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:47.840 some years. In the end, it wasn't until eighteen eighty seven, 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:52.840 Over twenty years later, the German physicist Heimrich Hurtz, working 0:02:52.840 --> 0:02:55.440 in his lab at the Carl's Rue Institute in Germany, 0:02:55.960 --> 0:02:59.680 generated the radio waves that finally proved Maxwell's theory to 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:04.359 be correct. Now, for the first time ever, we had 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:09.840 the ability to send and receive communications wirelessly overseemingly vast distances. 0:03:11.280 --> 0:03:16.440 A decade later, Italian inventor and electrical engineer Guglielmo Marconi 0:03:16.800 --> 0:03:24.320 would pioneer the first practical radio transmitters. Owing to Maxwell's 0:03:24.320 --> 0:03:28.560 initial discovery, it was well understood that, since radio waves 0:03:28.600 --> 0:03:32.200 were a form of electromagnetic radiation, the Earth should, in 0:03:32.280 --> 0:03:35.640 theory be bombarded by signals from any number of celestial 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:40.520 sources throughout the universe. However, after the discovery of the 0:03:40.560 --> 0:03:44.680 ionosphere in nineteen o two, most physicists assumed that any 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:48.920 radio transmissions from outside the atmosphere would be instantly deflected 0:03:49.000 --> 0:03:53.040 back into space, and so it was in nineteen thirty 0:03:53.080 --> 0:03:57.320 three when Carl Gutjanski, who was working for Bell Laboratories 0:03:57.400 --> 0:04:03.280 in Hondell, New Jersey, made an extra dary discovery. Having 0:04:03.320 --> 0:04:05.600 missed out to a T and T in the race 0:04:05.640 --> 0:04:10.440 to build the first transatlantic telephone communications Bell Labs were 0:04:10.480 --> 0:04:12.920 hoping to improve on the system with the use of 0:04:12.960 --> 0:04:17.000 short radio waves. The only problem was trying to figure 0:04:17.040 --> 0:04:20.240 out a way to stop the pesky static from interfering 0:04:20.279 --> 0:04:24.640 with the transmissions. It was Jansky's job to try and 0:04:24.680 --> 0:04:28.160 determine once and for all, just where exactly the static 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:32.400 was coming from. A short time later, he had his answer. 0:04:33.000 --> 0:04:37.240 Sought of. Two sources were found to be coming from 0:04:37.240 --> 0:04:41.480 either near by or far off thunderstorms, but the third 0:04:41.520 --> 0:04:46.560 source was a steady, consistent hiss of unknown origin. The 0:04:46.680 --> 0:04:49.960 hiss would rise and fall in a period approximating a 0:04:50.040 --> 0:04:53.839 standard rotation of the Earth, so it seemed reasonable to 0:04:53.880 --> 0:04:58.080 assume it was generated by the Sun. But curiously, the 0:04:58.200 --> 0:05:01.440 signal seemed to repeat just four minutes, shy of twenty 0:05:01.440 --> 0:05:06.679 four hours. What Jansky eventually discovered was that the signal 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:10.200 was not coming from the Sun at all. It was 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:17.120 coming from somewhere in the middle of the Milky Way. 0:05:20.880 --> 0:05:24.159 Early in the twentieth century, a number of scientists, including 0:05:24.240 --> 0:05:28.039 Nikola Tesla and Lord William Kelvin, had speculated on the 0:05:28.160 --> 0:05:31.360 use of radio waves to contact lifeforms on other planets. 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:35.880 But it wasn't until astronomer Frank Drake's nineteen sixty project 0:05:35.960 --> 0:05:40.880 Uzma that scientists took seriously the possibility that other civilizations 0:05:41.000 --> 0:05:44.360 might in fact be trying to contact us, and may 0:05:44.400 --> 0:05:49.520 have been doing so for quite some time. Drake's project 0:05:49.720 --> 0:05:52.719 is widely considered the birth of the modern Setti movement 0:05:53.160 --> 0:05:57.400 and inspired many others to pick up the mantle. But 0:05:57.560 --> 0:06:02.960 such projects require inordinate amounts of ambition and money. Fortunately, 0:06:03.160 --> 0:06:06.080 it was the nineteen sixties, and certainly in the case 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:09.360 of the United States, never before or since had so 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:14.240 much been invested in space exploration. It was a remarkably 0:06:14.279 --> 0:06:17.120 complex decade for the young nation, in which a new 0:06:17.160 --> 0:06:20.440 soul appeared to be awakening, embodied by the civil rights 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:25.400 movement and the social optimism of Jack Kennedy's government. It 0:06:25.480 --> 0:06:29.000 was an optimism that grew in spite of less palatable agendas, 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:32.320 but ultimately one that could not drown out the sound 0:06:32.320 --> 0:06:37.800 of distant bombs coming from the far East. It was 0:06:37.880 --> 0:06:41.560 a nation, in one sense blossoming in color, but in another, 0:06:41.920 --> 0:06:45.640 bleeding to death on the jungle floor of Vietnam, a 0:06:45.760 --> 0:06:50.120 nation drafting disproportionately poor or black soldiers to fight in 0:06:50.200 --> 0:06:54.239 unknown places, and yet at the same time a nation 0:06:54.320 --> 0:06:57.560 inspiring the world as it stepped forth from the Apollo 0:06:57.600 --> 0:07:00.960 eleven lunar module to plant a foot on the dusty 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:06.240 surface of the Moon. The space race may have begun 0:07:06.320 --> 0:07:10.120 as a cynical and divisive battle to demonstrate economic primacy, 0:07:10.640 --> 0:07:14.120 But as Neil Armstrong emerged from NASA's spacecraft on July 0:07:14.200 --> 0:07:17.960 twenty first, nineteen sixty nine, what the world saw was 0:07:18.040 --> 0:07:21.600 nothing but a human being alone in the vastness of space, 0:07:22.240 --> 0:07:26.200 unfettered by politics or religion, his face and skin color 0:07:26.520 --> 0:07:31.520 hidden under a hulking, cumbersome spacesuit. In that moment, no 0:07:31.680 --> 0:07:36.360 country had ever before created an image of such profound symbolism, 0:07:36.400 --> 0:07:40.600 a moment to obliterate what divides us, revealing instead that 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:46.120 above everything else, humanity was all of us. In that moment, 0:07:46.640 --> 0:07:50.080 we were all Neil Armstrong, taking one small step for 0:07:50.160 --> 0:07:56.680 humans and one giant leap for human kind. And then 0:07:56.880 --> 0:08:02.320 almost overnight, the funding dried up. The installation of the 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:06.120 Nixon administration in nineteen sixty nine brought a raft of 0:08:06.160 --> 0:08:09.480 ideological changes, many of which were at odds with the 0:08:09.520 --> 0:08:14.720 scientific community. By nineteen seventy three, President Nixon had not 0:08:14.800 --> 0:08:18.600 only abolished the post of Scientific Adviser, but also the 0:08:18.800 --> 0:08:22.400 entire Office of Science and Technology. By the end of 0:08:22.400 --> 0:08:26.280 the year, spending on non defense based research and development 0:08:26.600 --> 0:08:30.320 had been reduced by a third. As a result, the 0:08:30.440 --> 0:08:33.800 National Science Foundation was forced to make drastic cuts to 0:08:33.880 --> 0:08:38.160 a number of research projects, including one particularly ambitious operation 0:08:38.600 --> 0:08:41.760 that had been running out of Perkins Observatory at Ohio 0:08:41.800 --> 0:08:48.959 State University since nineteen sixty five. Are you always taking 0:08:49.040 --> 0:08:51.440 care of your family? Do you often take care of 0:08:51.480 --> 0:08:54.520 others and not yourself. Now it's time to take care 0:08:54.559 --> 0:08:57.959 of yourself. To make time for you you deserve it. 0:08:58.480 --> 0:09:01.800 Telldoc gives you access to a licensed therapist to help 0:09:01.800 --> 0:09:04.400 you get back to feeling your best, to feeling like 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:08.480 yourself again. With teledoc, you can speak to a licensed 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:12.560 therapist by phone or video. Therapy appointments are available seven 0:09:12.640 --> 0:09:15.800 days a week from seven am to nine pm local time. 0:09:16.320 --> 0:09:20.840 If you feel overwhelmed sometimes maybe you feel stressed or anxious, 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:24.160 depressed or lonely, or you might be struggling with a 0:09:24.240 --> 0:09:28.920 personal or family issue, teledoc can help. Teledoc is committed 0:09:28.960 --> 0:09:32.640 to facilitating great therapeutic matches, so they make it easy 0:09:32.679 --> 0:09:37.040 to change counselors if needed. For free teledoc therapy is 0:09:37.080 --> 0:09:41.240 available through most insurance or employers. Download the app or 0:09:41.360 --> 0:09:45.679 visit teledoc dot com forward slash Unexplained podcast today to 0:09:45.720 --> 0:09:56.640 get started. That's teladoc dot com slash Unexplained podcast. The 0:09:56.760 --> 0:10:00.680 project was the brainchild of American physicist John D. Krause, 0:10:01.080 --> 0:10:04.440 who in nineteen fifty five proposed the modest plan to 0:10:04.480 --> 0:10:09.200 conduct a radio survey of the entire universe. Two years later, 0:10:09.600 --> 0:10:16.000 construction began on a structure of truly epic proportions, formed 0:10:16.000 --> 0:10:19.600 of one flat tiltable reflector measuring three hundred and forty 0:10:19.600 --> 0:10:23.080 feet by one hundred feet in height, a fixed curved 0:10:23.160 --> 0:10:26.839 reflector measuring three hundred and sixty feet by seventy feet 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:30.840 in height, and a vast aluminium ground covering. By the 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:34.760 time it was completed five years later, the telescope covered 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:40.200 an area the size of three football fields. Fittingly, it 0:10:40.240 --> 0:10:45.440 was given the name Big Ear. The telescope was turned 0:10:45.440 --> 0:10:49.600 on in nineteen sixty five. Eight years later, Big Ear 0:10:49.679 --> 0:10:53.080 had recorded seventy percent of the sky and picked up 0:10:53.240 --> 0:10:57.600 over twenty thousand radio wave emitting objects, some of which 0:10:57.679 --> 0:11:00.640 had come from the furthest reaches of the universe, with 0:11:00.679 --> 0:11:05.240 a great number of them previously unknown signals. But in 0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:09.000 nineteen seventy two, owing to the funding cuts, the United 0:11:09.040 --> 0:11:15.680 States Congress voted to end the Ohio Sky Survey. Perversely, 0:11:16.000 --> 0:11:19.440 the decision was a blessing in disguise for Setti, when 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:23.080 it was decided to instead use the enormous telescope to 0:11:23.120 --> 0:11:26.720 focus solely on listening out for signs of alien life 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:32.720 in nineteen seventy three. The telescope was then pitched specifically 0:11:32.960 --> 0:11:36.480 at an area of the electromagnetic spectrum known as the 0:11:36.559 --> 0:11:41.680 hydrogen line. The line refers to the wave frequency roughly 0:11:41.920 --> 0:11:46.480 fourteen hundred and twenty megaherts of neutral hydrogen atoms, the 0:11:46.559 --> 0:11:52.680 most abundant substance in space. In nineteen fifty nine, astrophysicists 0:11:52.760 --> 0:11:57.280 Philip Morrison and Frank Drake reasoned that any advanced civilization 0:11:57.440 --> 0:12:00.800 would recognize the hydrogen line as the best frequency band 0:12:00.920 --> 0:12:05.719 to omit interstellar beacons, and so once it was set, 0:12:05.760 --> 0:12:09.440 the telescope would remain scouring the universe with each rotation 0:12:09.480 --> 0:12:12.360 of the Earth day after day, picking up the same 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:24.960 familiar signals, But then something extraordinary happened. On Monday, August 0:12:25.000 --> 0:12:29.000 the fifteenth, nineteen seventy seven, forty seven year old SETTI 0:12:29.080 --> 0:12:33.160 volunteer Jerry Emmon finished his last shift and locked up 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:37.120 the lab for the evening. Later that night, with Jerry 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:40.400 tucked up in bed, back at the lab, lights blinked 0:12:40.400 --> 0:12:43.400 in the darkness and cooling fan's word as the printer, 0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:48.760 with its relentless metallic rattling, spewed out the data minute 0:12:48.760 --> 0:12:52.800 after minute, hour after hour. The familiar rhythms played out 0:12:53.200 --> 0:12:57.360 as the telescope's signals were analyzed and processed before appearing 0:12:57.400 --> 0:13:02.440 as alpha numeric code on the Sprocket fair paper. But then, 0:13:02.880 --> 0:13:08.200 at approximately ten sixteen pm Eastern Standard time, something upset 0:13:08.240 --> 0:13:18.079 the rhythm, an unusual signal that lasted no more than 0:13:18.160 --> 0:13:25.240 seventy two seconds before it was gone. Seconds later, as 0:13:25.280 --> 0:13:29.240 the lights continued to blink and the fans continued to hum, 0:13:29.280 --> 0:13:35.320 the printer settled back into its familiar metallic rhythm. It 0:13:35.360 --> 0:13:37.920 would be four days before Jerry would make it back 0:13:37.960 --> 0:13:42.960 to the observatory to analyze the data. On August nineteenth, 0:13:43.160 --> 0:13:45.959 just after dinner, Jerry made his way down to the 0:13:46.040 --> 0:13:50.319 lab moments later, he found himself staring down at a 0:13:50.360 --> 0:13:55.960 computer print out that was almost impossible to believe. The 0:13:56.120 --> 0:13:59.240 data is printed in columns, with each of the first 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:03.040 fifty columns showing the intensity of a signal in relation 0:14:03.120 --> 0:14:07.760 to specific bands of frequency. The intensity was recorded on 0:14:07.760 --> 0:14:10.960 a scale of one to nine, with anything larger being 0:14:10.960 --> 0:14:14.240 represented by letters of the alphabet in an ascending scale 0:14:14.400 --> 0:14:19.560 from A to Z. Ordinarily, one would expect the redoubt 0:14:19.760 --> 0:14:23.840 to display mainly blank spaces where no intensity is recorded, 0:14:24.280 --> 0:14:28.120 or ones and twos for low intensity. But when Jerry 0:14:28.120 --> 0:14:31.240 looked at the print out from ten sixteen pm on Monday, 0:14:31.280 --> 0:14:37.080 August the fifteenth, his jaw dropped in a sea of blanks, ones, 0:14:37.120 --> 0:14:40.960 and twos. Standing out by a mile was the sequence 0:14:41.360 --> 0:14:47.480 six e q U J five. Without even thinking, Jerry 0:14:47.480 --> 0:14:50.720 grabbed a red pen, circled the numbers, and scrawled the 0:14:50.760 --> 0:14:54.800 word WOU in the margin. Not only had such a 0:14:54.840 --> 0:14:59.440 sequence never been seen before, the letter U alone had 0:14:59.480 --> 0:15:03.360 never before or been recorded by the telescope. The signal 0:15:03.640 --> 0:15:06.320 was later discovered to be coming from the direction of 0:15:06.400 --> 0:15:10.720 the constellation of Sagittarius, over two hundred like years away. 0:15:12.320 --> 0:15:16.080 To this day, the origin of the signal remains a mystery. 0:15:18.240 --> 0:15:21.680 As for Big Ear. In nineteen ninety eight, the radio 0:15:21.720 --> 0:15:25.160 telescope was ordered to be dismantled by the landowners to 0:15:25.280 --> 0:15:27.560 make way for a three hundred and eighty one LOTT 0:15:27.680 --> 0:15:37.400 development and a nine hole golf course. All elements of 0:15:37.520 --> 0:15:41.360 Unexplained are produced by me Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe 0:15:41.360 --> 0:15:43.360 and rate the show on iTunes, but feel free to 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:45.760 get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the 0:15:45.800 --> 0:15:48.440 stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:51.120 explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can 0:15:51.160 --> 0:15:54.000 reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com or on 0:15:54.000 --> 0:16:09.520 Twitter at Unexplained pod Now. It's time to take care 0:16:09.520 --> 0:16:13.720 of yourself. To make time for you, teledoc gives you 0:16:13.800 --> 0:16:16.960 access to a licensed therapist to help you get back 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:20.840 to feeling your best. Speak to a licensed therapist by 0:16:20.880 --> 0:16:24.600 phone or video anytime between seven am to nine pm 0:16:24.640 --> 0:16:29.160 local time, seven days a week. Teledoc Therapy is available 0:16:29.160 --> 0:16:33.120 through most insurance or employers. Download the app, or visit 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:37.960 teledoc dot com forward slash Unexplained Podcast Today to get started. 0:16:38.400 --> 0:16:42.200 That's t e l a d oc dot com slash 0:16:42.280 --> 0:16:43.520 Unexplained podcast