The Wow! Signal

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On Aug. 15, 1977, a telescope at Ohio State University detected a strong narrowband radio signal in the constellation Sagittarius — one so unusual that astronomer Jerry Ehman marked the printout with an exclamation.

The signal’s intensity rose and then fell as the beam swept past its position in the sky. That’s consistent with an extraterrestrial origin … but in 30 years and more than 100 searches, no one has been able to relocate it.

Without a recurrence, there’s no way to know what Ehman’s telescope heard that night — it’s just a frustrating splash in a large, silent sea.

08/27/2024 UPDATE: It appears there’s a natural explanation. New research suggests that the Wow! signal occurred when an interstellar cloud of cold hydrogen was stimulated by a strong transient radiation source, causing it to brighten momentarily. This phenomenon is rare but recognized, and it matches the described characteristics of the signal. This natural explanation is much preferable to the hypothesis of an alien technology — aliens may be out there, but we don’t need them to explain what Jerry Ehman saw in 1977. Thanks to podcast listener Eugene Chang for the tip.

| Oddities · Science & Math

Hard Times

In 1820, Richard Whatley wrote a facetious elegy for Oxford geologist William Buckland:

Where shall we our great Professor inter,
That in peace he may rest his bones?
If we hew him a rocky sepulchre
He will rise and break the stones,
And examine each stratum that lies around
For he’s quite in his element underground.

Ironically, when Buckland did pass away in 1856, the gravedigger struck an outcrop of limestone just below the surface and had to use gunpowder to put Buckland to rest.

Ambrose Bierce defined geology as “The science of the earth’s crust–to which, doubtless, will be added that of its interior whenever a man shall come up garrulous out of a well.”

| Science & Math

Unquote

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“If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.” — Anatole France

Curiously, when France died in 1924, doctors found that his brain was two-thirds normal size. But, said surgeon Louis Guillaume, “It was the most beautiful brain one could dream of seeing. Its convolutions were marvelous.”

| Literature · Oddities · Quotations

Interlude

There was a Man who presented to Henry the Great of France, an Anagram upon his name, (Borbonius) which was Bonus Orbi, Orbus Boni; the King asked him what it meant, he told him, That when his Majesty was a Hugonot he was Bonus Orbi [good to the world], but when he turned Catholick he was Orbus Boni [destitute of good]; a very fine Anagram, saith the King; I pray what Profession are you of? Please your Majesty I am a maker of Anagrams, but I am a very poor Man: I believe it, said the King, for they that use that Trade cannot grow very Rich.

— William De Britaine, Humane Prudence, 1693

| Language

The Colditz Cock

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The guards at Nazi prisoner-of-war camps were accustomed to looking for tunnels — so they never thought to look in the attic at Colditz Castle, where, astonishingly, British prisoners had constructed a 19-foot glider from scavenged materials.

They planned to launch it from the roof, using a pulley system driven by a falling bathtub full of concrete. They hoped this would send two men soaring across the River Mulde 60 meters below.

The American army liberated the camp before the glider could be launched, and it was subsequently lost, so for 55 years its designers could only wonder whether the “Colditz Cock” would really have flown. But in 1999 a British aviation company built a full-size replica, and the POWs reunited to watch the launch. It worked.

| History · Technology

Gun Control

Only four days ago, right in the next farm house to the one where I am spending the summer, a grandmother, old and gray and sweet, one of the loveliest spirits in the land, was sitting at her work, when her young grandson crept in and got down an old, battered, rusty gun which had not been touched for many years and was supposed not to be loaded, and pointed it at her, laughing, and threatening to shoot. In her fright she ran screaming and pleading toward the door on the other side of the room; but as she passed him he placed the gun almost against her very breast and pulled the trigger! He had supposed it was not loaded. And he was right: it wasn’t. So there wasn’t any harm done.

— Mark Twain, “Advice to Youth,” 1882

| Literature · Society

Vindicated

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As a writer, W.T. Stead may have been too prescient.

In 1886 he published an article about the sinking of an ocean liner and the consequent loss of life, warning, “This is exactly what might take place and will take place if liners are sent to sea short of boats.”

Six years later he wrote a novel, From the Old World to the New, in which a ship collides with an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sinks; the survivors are picked up by the Majestic, a ship of the White Star Line.

An outspoken newspaper editor, Stead himself embarked for the New World in April 1912 when President Taft invited him to address a peace conference at Carnegie Hall.

Alas, he never arrived — he had booked his passage on the RMS Titanic.

| History · Oddities