(ORDO NEWS) — For 55 years, no one has explored the part of space where the “Wow!” signal, which some astronomers believe is a message from an alien civilization, could originate.
Now, an international team of researchers have double-telescoped the area where the signal most likely came from, but have found nothing of note there.
The Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio State University (USA) recorded a 72-second narrowband signal on paper tape on August 15, 1977.
A few days later, astronomer Jerry Eyman examined the recording and found the signal so unusual that he scrawled the word “Wow!” (translated from English – “wow!”).
Since then, this signal has been discussed for a long time in the astronomical community, but it has not been possible to explain its origin.
No one has yet taken a detailed survey of the part of the sky where the signal most likely originated.
Now astronomers have corrected this omission and conducted a double telescopic study of the part of the night sky where the source of “Wow!” could be located.
Scientists have previously conducted a comprehensive search of the European Space Agency ‘s database of more than a billion stars.
This allowed them to narrow down the possible star systems that could be the source of “Wow!” to a single star, 2MASS 19281982-2640123. It is located in the constellation Sagittarius, at a distance of 1800 light years from Earth.
Astronomers conducted a double telescoping of the part of space where the desired star is located. To do this, they used the Green Bank Telescope and the Allen Array.
Both telescopes pointed at the right star on the same day: Green Bank studied it for two half-hour periods, and the Allen array made six observations, each of which lasted five minutes. There was also one period when the observations overlapped.
The results were disappointing for those hoping for extraterrestrial contact: no signal worthy of an exclamation “wow!” Was recorded. Nevertheless, astronomers noted the effectiveness of the approach used and hope that a similar double telescoping can be used to study other mysterious signals.
—
Online:
Contact us: [email protected]
Our Standards, Terms of Use: Standard Terms And Conditions.