Wow!

Jerry R. Ehman is an American astronomer who first detected the strong narrowband radio signal known as the Wow! signal of August 15, 1977 while working on a SETI project at the Big Ear radio telescope of Ohio State University.

Sourced

• Wow!
  • Notation on the printout of what became known as the Wow! signal (August 1977).

• A person not familiar with all of the special knowledge about a particular instrument should not try to draw too many conclusions from printed data. Such data typically contains certain assumptions about the equipment not necessarily known to outsiders.
  • The Big Ear Wow! Signal : What We Know and Don't Know About It After 20 Years (1 September 1997); section: Vast Conclusions from "Half-Vast" Data

• Since all of the possibilities of a terrestrial origin have been either ruled out or seem improbable, and since the possibility of an extraterrestrial origin has not been able to be ruled out, I must conclude that an ETI (ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) might have sent the signal that we received as the Wow! source. Of course, being a scientist, I await the reception of additional signals like the Wow! source that are able to be received and analyzed by many observatories. Thus, I must state that the origin of the Wow! signal is still an open question for me. There is simply too little data to draw many conclusions. In other words, as I stated above, I choose not to "draw vast conclusions from 'half-vast' data".
  • The Big Ear Wow! Signal : What We Know and Don't Know About It After 20 Years (1 September 1997); section: ETI

External links

• The Big Ear Wow! Signal : What We Know and Don't Know About It After 20 Years
• Explanation of the code "6EQUJ5" on the Wow! computer printout