Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, Robert, I want to hear science joke.
Speaker 1: Give me with it. Nature's oxide walks up to Gold said, hey,
Speaker 1: you want to go speak carbon and oh Gold says,
Speaker 1: I just love it. That was a good one to
Speaker 1: get to the elements with that chow. Yeah, we're gonna
Speaker 1: have to do a podcast on the periodic table, I
Speaker 1: think one of these days. Yeah, I think we had
Speaker 1: a request for it. Um, and that comes to it.
Speaker 1: That joke comes to us a compliments of Facebook, Zach,
Speaker 1: and you can send us all your bad jokes. We
Speaker 1: love them clearly. Um on Facebook, we're stuff from the
Speaker 1: Science Lab, or you can always tweet us your bad
Speaker 1: jokes too, were lab stuff over on Twitter. But to
Speaker 1: get away from the periodic table today, we're talking about
Speaker 1: STI again and in particular one when one event in
Speaker 1: SETI that you guys may be familiar with. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: talking about the Wow signal here, right. Yeah. So I
Speaker 1: was inspired to do this podcast because there's a pretty
Speaker 1: cool event that happened in August called set Con and
Speaker 1: this was convention, right yes, and Comic Con, which you
Speaker 1: were just tweating about the other day. So it was
Speaker 1: organized by the folks at the seti Into Institute and
Speaker 1: that's one of the really the big ones, the big
Speaker 1: cohunas when it comes to study. You know, you have
Speaker 1: people like Frank Drake there, he of the Drake equation,
Speaker 1: Jilt Tarter, she was of course the model for Jodie
Speaker 1: Foster's character in Contact Um. Seth show Stack is one
Speaker 1: of their big people there are one of their big researchers,
Speaker 1: and so they had some pretty cool events. But there
Speaker 1: was an interesting debate that arose out of set Con.
Speaker 1: And we've covered this before. Yeah, most of this, uh
Speaker 1: comes out of some stuff that Stephen Hawkings said in
Speaker 1: the recent and I think I've been saying already, but
Speaker 1: but then he said it on a Discovery documentary series
Speaker 1: about the universe, Stephen Hawkings Universe, and uh so suddenly
Speaker 1: I think it was like like I said, I think
Speaker 1: it was one of those newsweeks for there wasn't much
Speaker 1: to report yet. We hadn't had an oil spill um
Speaker 1: that was like a week off. So they're like, whoa
Speaker 1: Stephen Hawking is saying that aliens want to destroy us.
Speaker 1: Let's uh, let's you know, sex up the headlines and
Speaker 1: uh and and have a field day with this. So
Speaker 1: you guys might remember we did a podcast that covered
Speaker 1: some of this ground. And right like Roberts saying it
Speaker 1: was just hawking, was theorizing, well, yeah, if there's intelligent
Speaker 1: life out there, maybe these life forms might be inclined
Speaker 1: to harm us and take theirs. Yes. His whole thing
Speaker 1: was like, we we are the model that we by
Speaker 1: which we can try and understand what alien life we
Speaker 1: consist of. And if there anything like us, there probably
Speaker 1: kind of jerks, so maybe we shouldn't meet them. I mean,
Speaker 1: that was essentially it. I mean it was. It's kind
Speaker 1: of blee. He makes it a lot more elegantly than
Speaker 1: I did. But that was it. But you know, I
Speaker 1: mean I'm not indeed he does he did it? Did
Speaker 1: them justice? You did talking justice? Um. So the debate
Speaker 1: that is coming from this convention and that we've had
Speaker 1: all along is do we actively try to communicate with
Speaker 1: extraterrestrial intelligence? What's the benefit? Yeah, like, are they what
Speaker 1: are they gonna come? And do they're gonna come and
Speaker 1: share their technology with us and and you know, be
Speaker 1: super beneficial or or are they going to conquerss I
Speaker 1: guess the I deal. I mean a lot of it
Speaker 1: is just based in curiosity. You know, the universe is vast,
Speaker 1: it you know, spans essentially forever as far as our
Speaker 1: minds can understand it or grasp it, you know, and
Speaker 1: so what's out there? You know, Well, curiosity of course
Speaker 1: being the predecessor of innovation and exploration all those good
Speaker 1: ations that we like to do, and that advanced our
Speaker 1: civilization too. Yeah. So if they have the technology to
Speaker 1: receive our message, you know, for actively broadcasting one of
Speaker 1: those foolish things like did you hear about the instance
Speaker 1: where that social networking site Bibo sending hundreds of user
Speaker 1: generated text messages and um pictures and all this stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was They covered that in this American Life of Contact. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's just all sorts of idiotic things being sent
Speaker 1: out there. They were basically like some heartfelt things. It
Speaker 1: wasn't all idiotic, but a lot of kind of silly
Speaker 1: things that were being beamed to a planet twenty light
Speaker 1: years away, an extra planet. Yeah. Maybe maybe it's because
Speaker 1: I like to think maybe it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory thing. I mean, it's kind of like the
Speaker 1: the NASA who ever found out that there's that there's
Speaker 1: some danger over there, there's some sort of like horrible
Speaker 1: intergalactic civilization. They're like, whoa, We've got to convince them
Speaker 1: that we're really dumb, because otherwise it's gonna come and
Speaker 1: harvest our brains. So let's let's hook them up to
Speaker 1: our social networking. You know, they're trying to think them out.
Speaker 1: Interesting my theory because earlier, you know, the earlier method,
Speaker 1: like with the voyager missions and all, was to you know,
Speaker 1: a send naked pictures of ourselves, but also you know,
Speaker 1: be like, look at us, we understand math and and
Speaker 1: you know that we have this grasp of science, and
Speaker 1: trying to convey that we're we're nice, upstanding members of
Speaker 1: the neighborhood and that we should be invited over to
Speaker 1: dinner sometime. You know that kind of thing. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: whatever your stance is on sending messages, we really have
Speaker 1: been sending messages indirectly pretty much ever since TVs and
Speaker 1: radios have been around, Right, Yeah, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: we've in um in contrast to like sending out a
Speaker 1: polite message to the neighbors, It's like we've had our
Speaker 1: windows open with the TV blaring literally with the TV
Speaker 1: for forty years, and now the neighbor is finally coming
Speaker 1: over and being a pan of brownies and you know
Speaker 1: some music. Yeah, there's actually there's a great Futurama episode
Speaker 1: where the aliens come to invade because there they've been
Speaker 1: like this takes place, you know, like far in the future.
Speaker 1: So they're just now watching an Ally McBeal esque show
Speaker 1: and can you just mentioned Ally mcnel? I forget it
Speaker 1: was called like single Female Lawyer or something. So suddenly
Speaker 1: they're signing there there the signals is interrupted, and they're like,
Speaker 1: what happened to the rest of on the rest of
Speaker 1: the series, And so they come to invade Earth because
Speaker 1: they want to find out how the series ended. So
Speaker 1: let's do a quick reminder. I know you guys know this,
Speaker 1: but of how we conduct set on Earth, the search
Speaker 1: for extraterrestrial intelligence, it's pretty simple. Basically, we just listen
Speaker 1: and we watch. And this is interesting and that there
Speaker 1: is a lot of argument out there over whether we're
Speaker 1: listening and watching for the right stuff. Our method so
Speaker 1: far has really been to concentrate on collecting the radio
Speaker 1: waves emanating from space. Yeah, we often use radio signals
Speaker 1: as a as a benchmark for a civilization's technological achievement. Right,
Speaker 1: So there are some people like cosmologists Paul Davies who
Speaker 1: are saying, hey, maybe we should be checking out some pulsars.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's some civilizations out there saying, listen that pulsar.
Speaker 1: We're making it flash like a beacon. How come the
Speaker 1: civilization isn't getting it? It's so obvious. Yeah, that would
Speaker 1: be like a type two civilization or or type three.
Speaker 1: So we look and we listen, and we're basically listening
Speaker 1: by eavesdropping on any radio communications coming from beyond Earth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're trying to hear their TV show, is there lawyer
Speaker 1: shows from some distant point in their past. So the
Speaker 1: basic instrument going on here is a radio telescope in
Speaker 1: the search for steady. It collects radio waves from space,
Speaker 1: and because the cosmic radio waves are weak, the telescope
Speaker 1: collecting dishes are are really large. And you guys know
Speaker 1: this if you've seen are Cibo and Puerto Rico, or
Speaker 1: pictures of the now defunct Bigger in Ohio, and it's
Speaker 1: actually bigger that we're going to be talking about today.
Speaker 1: These things look more like landscape and then something we've built,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like just huge, huge telescopes. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and they can survey these enormous chunks of the sky,
Speaker 1: one of like these large chunks of the sky one
Speaker 1: at a time, those chunks for signals, you can take
Speaker 1: this sort of wide field approach and it lets the
Speaker 1: telescope cover the entire sky out of low resolution in
Speaker 1: a short period of time. So you're packing all this
Speaker 1: information and but you know what, you're not getting particularly
Speaker 1: quality information. So you do pick up the signal, well,
Speaker 1: you're not going to know precisely where it was without
Speaker 1: a high resolution arch and then you know what, what
Speaker 1: if it doesn't repeat right, then you can't because that's
Speaker 1: like we were talking earlier. Repetition is I mean, it's
Speaker 1: key in science. And I hear heard something interesting, I
Speaker 1: want to hear it again so that I can start
Speaker 1: analyzing it. And you can also do a targeted search,
Speaker 1: right yeah, and this is uh, focusing on a limited
Speaker 1: number like one thousand to two thousand of the sun
Speaker 1: like stars out there for extraterrestrial signals. Targeted search allows
Speaker 1: for a more detailed investigation of a small area that
Speaker 1: we think might be probable location so in in other words,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's like it's sounds a targeted search instead
Speaker 1: of a wide search. It'sn't like you know, there's it's
Speaker 1: like when the police decide to search an individual house
Speaker 1: instead of canvassing the neighborhood. Yeah, because they already have
Speaker 1: some suspects in mind. Yeah, yeah, they have some intel
Speaker 1: that they're going on. So and the idea here is
Speaker 1: we have we might have intel to go on because
Speaker 1: we're saying, oh, well, this particular uh section has the
Speaker 1: potential more of a potential to have a planet and
Speaker 1: life could have evolved on than this like empty area blackness.
Speaker 1: And another thing to bring to the table is that
Speaker 1: our knowledge of exoplanets out there is growing every day.
Speaker 1: I mean we know of hundreds yeah, so yeah, the
Speaker 1: intelligence is improving, so we're getting a better idea of
Speaker 1: where we should be aiming these targeted searches. And in fact,
Speaker 1: that's what Kepler has been out there doing, to a
Speaker 1: hardworking Kepler. So today we're pretty much interested in one
Speaker 1: particular radio telescope by the name of Bigger. Bigger is
Speaker 1: pretty famous as far as radio telescope scale. That sounds
Speaker 1: kind of funny, Yeah, like I was trying to imagine
Speaker 1: like like one of those teenage magazines that you see
Speaker 1: in the grocery store, and they'd be like the cover
Speaker 1: is like something about like the heart Throb and then
Speaker 1: like top ten radio telescopes and like teenagers are going
Speaker 1: crazy for him. Right, So Vigier was in Ohio, was
Speaker 1: Ohio State University Radio Telescope. And to paraphrase one of
Speaker 1: our old freelance writers, Susan Nasser who wrote about Figure,
Speaker 1: but he looked kind of like a shiny parking lot.
Speaker 1: It had a wall that was sitting on either end,
Speaker 1: and there's one all that one wall that faced the sky.
Speaker 1: Chick collect these radio waves and the waves then traveled
Speaker 1: over the ground, which was covered with a sheet of
Speaker 1: aluminum to preserve the signal as block interference, good stuff
Speaker 1: like that, And then they traveled to the other wall,
Speaker 1: which was curved, and it sent the waves to receiver
Speaker 1: and eventually all that handy information wound up being printed
Speaker 1: out at a computer. Yeah, they're kind of big eyes source,
Speaker 1: but they kind of have to be to do well.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of sad Bigger is no longer there. Bigger, Uh.
Speaker 1: It went online in nineteen in nineteen seventy three it
Speaker 1: began searching for radio signals. But since Bigger has been
Speaker 1: in service, it has now gone defunct, and I believe
Speaker 1: it has been replaced by a development of residential development
Speaker 1: in Ohio, which I think is really sad. It would
Speaker 1: have been more ironic if you have been replaced by
Speaker 1: a parking lot. So yeah, nine seventy three, Bigger begins
Speaker 1: its work. It's it's very serious, steady work, and one night,
Speaker 1: a couple of years later, we get something pretty interesting
Speaker 1: going on. Yeah, this was back in August, more than
Speaker 1: thirty years ago. It's a hot summer night. Yeah. They
Speaker 1: had big Ear aimed basically just just scan the Milky
Speaker 1: Way for some sort of a signal, and uh it
Speaker 1: got one, um, a really strong signal yeah. Um, and
Speaker 1: it was long too, one minute twelve seconds. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: for the For the one minute and twelve seconds, the
Speaker 1: waves were in the telescope search being the signal was strong.
Speaker 1: It ranged from five to thirty times the background radio
Speaker 1: noise that radio telescopes regularly to pick up. So that's
Speaker 1: an interesting thing to note. Right, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: spaces in noisy place. Um, and there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of a window that you can listen for. And so
Speaker 1: this was stronger than the background noise out there. So
Speaker 1: that was pretty interesting. Yeah, the signal was amazing, and
Speaker 1: uh so of course we kept searching for it. Like
Speaker 1: I said, repetition, we wanted to hear it again. We
Speaker 1: didn't hear it again. We have never heard it again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's left in the case with these signals and and
Speaker 1: the Wow signal as this would soon be called because
Speaker 1: days later professor at an Ohio State, a guy by
Speaker 1: the name of Jerry Emon or Emmin, he saw the
Speaker 1: print out from Big Ears computer. There's no one around
Speaker 1: to tell to talk to poor Jerry, and he circled
Speaker 1: the sequence from the night Big Ear picked up this
Speaker 1: unusual signal and he wrote wow exclamation point. And so
Speaker 1: professor was teaching Astronomy and Electrical Engineering os U. He'd
Speaker 1: worked on Big Ears project. In fact, you're so devoted
Speaker 1: to Big Ear and the telescope's work that after funding
Speaker 1: was slashed and he was like, oh, he came back
Speaker 1: as a volunteer. Wow, because he's kind of like that
Speaker 1: dude who like, you know, it's like you see a
Speaker 1: ghost or something for you know, and then you're like,
Speaker 1: you spend the rest of your life sort of like
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what the world that was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I think he has in this case. I really
Speaker 1: think he has, because the Wild signal is huge. I mean,
Speaker 1: why was it so huge, why was it so remarkable,
Speaker 1: and why couldn't have just been some object in space?
Speaker 1: Because we know that there are a lot of natural
Speaker 1: objects like stars and black holes and these emit radio waves.
Speaker 1: But on wow is line of sight in the sky,
Speaker 1: there were no astronomical sources of radio waves at all.
Speaker 1: So WOW did hail from a spot near Sagittarius A,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty big source of radio waves at
Speaker 1: the center of our galaxy. But wow is line of
Speaker 1: sight that night in the sky, it didn't match up.
Speaker 1: It traced to a different line of sight than this region.
Speaker 1: And so really the conclusion that we drew was, of
Speaker 1: all the sources known at the time, WOW did not
Speaker 1: seem to come from a natural object in space, which
Speaker 1: would mean it's uh, It's like Sherlock Holmes said, right,
Speaker 1: once you've ruled out all the natural, then you have
Speaker 1: to worry about the unnatural. Yeah, yeah, well yeah, or aliens.
Speaker 1: But yeah, first us could it have been US. Um okay, well,
Speaker 1: so yeah, interesting the radio signals narrow band, meaning it
Speaker 1: range over a few frequencies, unlike most of the natural
Speaker 1: radio sources in space, whose emissions tend to range over
Speaker 1: a huge number of frequencies. And yeah, like you were
Speaker 1: just saying it have come from US. Yeah, we sent
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff into space, So there is the
Speaker 1: argument that that it could have come from some sort
Speaker 1: of you know, Earth produced instrument, A circling satellite on
Speaker 1: a probe, you know, on a program course through the space,
Speaker 1: could have sent the radio waves. Has it sent it
Speaker 1: back to Earth? Um? Well, no, The Big Air Group
Speaker 1: was good. They did their homework, They did their due diligence.
Speaker 1: They checked their lists for instruments in space at the time,
Speaker 1: because it would have been disappointing if they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: that was just something bouncing off of a satellite and
Speaker 1: it would that would have made kind of sense, you know. Well,
Speaker 1: they didn't find any. They checked their lists for all
Speaker 1: these instruments. They didn't find any that were in Wild's
Speaker 1: line of sight. They made a couple of calls, seriously,
Speaker 1: if they missed something. Nothing turned up. Besides that, we
Speaker 1: usually sent instruments to investigate moons and planets in our
Speaker 1: solar system, and the signal came from a plane apart
Speaker 1: from that plane, which I realized it's kind of tricky,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't. It wasn't. Again, it's it's not if
Speaker 1: it's bouncing off of something, as not bouncing off of
Speaker 1: anything that we sent up. So then again you also
Speaker 1: have the fact that man made transmissions weren't allowed at
Speaker 1: the cimeter radio wavelength that figure was listening to, right,
Speaker 1: So not only is there something weird out there making
Speaker 1: radio waves, but it's breaking the law. It's breaking the law.
Speaker 1: And then, like Robert was saying, just a little bit ago,
Speaker 1: there's this later idea that was floated that maybe, in fact,
Speaker 1: the wild signal was a radio wave sent from Earth
Speaker 1: that ransom space debree got reflected back. But again they
Speaker 1: ruled it out. They thought that the pattern didn't quite
Speaker 1: seem to match up for that scenario, which really is
Speaker 1: of course extraterrestrials. Yeah, when you rule out all the
Speaker 1: other scenarios, like you're saying, yeah, then you just go
Speaker 1: with the the unnatural and it's and so, yeah, we
Speaker 1: haven't had any kind of repetition on this, So it's
Speaker 1: it continues to be a mystery and people continue to
Speaker 1: throw out the theories, and he knows it maybe maybe
Speaker 1: one of those things that will never really have a
Speaker 1: firm answer too. And the wild signal is by far
Speaker 1: not the only signal that we've never been able to explain.
Speaker 1: The vaunted a study researcher Paul Horowitz who works out
Speaker 1: of Harvard because picked up legend goes thirty seven signals
Speaker 1: that he was never able to explain much in the
Speaker 1: way that we dismissed all of these factors as causing
Speaker 1: the Wow signal. He's done the same in a in
Speaker 1: an old paper. So the signals are out there and now,
Speaker 1: and then there's also glupe right, oh glup. Yeah, Strickland
Speaker 1: strictly wanted us to mention this one and this isn't
Speaker 1: so much an extraterrestrial signal, that this was a funky
Speaker 1: signal that was picked up underwater. Yeah, And I think well,
Speaker 1: Strickland and other people like to make the claim that
Speaker 1: it was the HP Lovecraft creation, the you know, the
Speaker 1: the god Cathulu, yes Caul on which we have an article,
Speaker 1: by the way, have you read that article? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't have to. I'm all up on that stuff. That
Speaker 1: Cathulo articles really aimed at people who really aren't is
Speaker 1: into Lovecraft as I am, like I should read. Well,
Speaker 1: my theory is that if the glut signal is Cthula,
Speaker 1: it's because Cathula really ticked off at how overblown he's
Speaker 1: become in uh in popular culture, and it is particularly
Speaker 1: irritated about the plush dolls you can buy. Right, So
Speaker 1: the gloop signal was picked up by one of the
Speaker 1: booty's out there, placed I think by a naval body,
Speaker 1: and it was picked up by the sonar equipment and
Speaker 1: it was said to be so deep and that it
Speaker 1: could not have been produced by any animal that we
Speaker 1: know of. Okay, fine, it was an animal produced. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe it was produced by something some rumblings within the
Speaker 1: inner Earth. Yeah, there's a lot in the inner Earth
Speaker 1: that we we don't completely understand. So that's completely feasible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's gloup for you, strick or ancient you know,
Speaker 1: squid god living on the bottom of the ocean. Very scientific.
Speaker 1: But here's another Lovecraft connection. Maybe the whole signal is
Speaker 1: actually as is off. Yeah, So what do you guys
Speaker 1: think these signals are. We're always putting the call out
Speaker 1: to write in and tell us your thoughts. We'd like
Speaker 1: to hear you think about Wow. Yeah, and uh point
Speaker 1: here at it. Yeah. Check out our checks out on
Speaker 1: Facebook where we're Stuff in the Science Lab, or on
Speaker 1: Twitter where we're lab Stuff. Um, we'll update you with
Speaker 1: all the stuff we're writing about and uh podcasting about. Hey.
Speaker 1: So we'd love to hear what you guys think of
Speaker 1: the Wow signal and other city phenomena out there, So
Speaker 1: send us an email it science stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: wrix dot com. Yeah, and be sure to check out
Speaker 1: our Facebook and Twitter accounts as well. On Twitter, we're
Speaker 1: lab Stuff. On Facebook we're stuff in the Science Lab.
Speaker 1: And there's always how stuff works dot com where Cfolo
Speaker 1: awaits you. So that's all we got for today. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening, guys. For more on this and thousands of
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