Wow Signal (2017) documentary

PhenomenaTV

On a late summer evening in 1977, Ohio radio astronomers discovered a strong, interstellar signal that is believed by many to be the best evidence of communication from an extraterrestrial civilization.

Transcript

00:00:00Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30Transcription by CastingWords

00:01:00Transcription by CastingWords

00:01:29Transcription by CastingWords

00:01:31Transcription by CastingWords

00:01:33Transcription by CastingWords

00:01:35Transcription by CastingWords

00:01:37Transcription by CastingWords

00:01:39Transcription by CastingWords

00:01:41Transcription by CastingWords

00:01:43The question of intelligent life is really a big question because it goes beyond just

00:01:49having biology.

00:01:50It's biology that got clever enough to understand the universe.

00:01:54If there are other civilizations out there, we automatically know that all the questions

00:02:01of life are answered yes.

00:02:05If we did discover an actual signal from an alien civilization, it would profoundly change

00:02:13human beings.

00:02:15This is discovery.

00:02:16It isn't the kind of science you learn about in middle school where you have an hypothesis

00:02:19and you try and falsify it.

00:02:21You can't falsify this hypothesis.

00:02:23You can't prove they're not out there.

00:02:24All you can do is discover that they are.

00:02:27So we have these 50 digits, so it looks like a bunch of random numbers.

00:02:326EQUJ5.

00:02:34That was exactly what we were looking for.

00:02:38I don't think many people have looked into it in much detail.

00:02:42It's an intriguing case because it's a mystery.

00:02:44We don't know what it was.

00:02:45It was the strongest signal I ever saw.

00:02:49An enormously powerful signal.

00:02:52It is the best evidence that we know of, of coming from some other civilization.

00:03:02Why do we search?

00:03:17Mankind has always been fascinated by the possibility of life beyond Earth.

00:03:22The idea of other civilizations thriving on distant planets captivates the imagination.

00:03:30We are driven, perhaps, by the hope that humanity is not alone in the universe, and by science's

00:03:35promise to always seek the unknown.

00:03:41On August 15, 1977, a massive radio telescope operated by The Ohio State University detected

00:03:48an unusually powerful signal from deep space.

00:03:52The signal had all the characteristics scientists expected in a transmission from an intelligent

00:03:58extraterrestrial source.

00:04:00The event lasted for 72 seconds and was never heard again.

00:04:05Named the WOW signal, it was a tantalizing moment in the search for extraterrestrial life

00:04:11and for the relatively young science of radio astronomy.

00:04:14It started going up and went 6EQUJ5 as it faded up to the other side.

00:04:21It's a tremendously strong signal.

00:04:24We had never seen anything like that before.

00:04:27And that told us that this really is a very strong narrow band signal that did not come

00:04:31from some natural source.

00:04:35Most are familiar with the traditional science of optical or visible light astronomy.

00:04:41Optical telescopes capture light rays and magnify distant objects for closer observation

00:04:46by the human eye.

00:04:48In comparison, radio astronomy focuses on the invisible, the radio frequency portion of the

00:04:54electromagnetic spectrum.

00:04:56Radio telescopes are specialized antennas and radio receivers that can detect the radio waves

00:05:03emanating from distant celestial objects.

00:05:07Every object that produces energy, every star, every galaxy, produces energy all along the energy

00:05:16range which we call the electromagnetic spectrum.

00:05:19The trouble with a visual telescope is that it only looks at a part of that spectrum, why

00:05:26I have one right here, that is very narrow and a very small part.

00:05:31We actually see a very small part of the universe.

00:05:36On one end you have the higher energies like ultraviolet and X-rays and gamma rays.

00:05:44On the lower end, down below the red, you have the very low frequency energies like infrared

00:05:50and radio.

00:05:52This is very, very narrow.

00:05:55It happens to be the part we're interested in because it's the part that we can actually

00:06:01detect.

00:06:03So you can look at a lot more information about a star at the radio end of the spectrum than

00:06:10the very limited amount of information you get in the visual end of the spectrum.

00:06:17Although radio waves from space were first detected in the early 1930s and the first radio

00:06:23telescope was built shortly thereafter, worldwide interest in radio astronomy escalated in the

00:06:28years following World War II.

00:06:31The United States was eager to invest in this new branch of science.

00:06:34We were kind of in the space race, we were in this idea that our country wanted to be

00:06:40the best in the world in terms of science and engineering.

00:06:42We wanted to be out there and we were willing to spend a lot of money, frankly, to do that.

00:06:48So we spent a lot of money, we got men on the moon, we built telescopes, we built a lot

00:06:52of fundamental science facilities here in the country.

00:06:55And that was fantastic and that just led to so many advances.

00:06:59You know, after World War II, there was a lot of technological achievement, especially

00:07:04in electronics and with radar coming on the scene and all of that.

00:07:09But you know, the war took its toll on most of the nations, but for whatever reason, Europe,

00:07:16especially England and Australia, really ramped up radio astronomy research.

00:07:23The United States didn't.

00:07:25They kind of lagged behind until about mid-fifties.

00:07:30Part of the reason was that instruments to detect radio signals from space are just so expensive

00:07:36to build, you know.

00:07:37A single university generally can't afford to build what you need to build to be successful.

00:07:45As radio astronomy continued to evolve, a young professor of electrical engineering at

00:07:50the Ohio State University observed its development with keen interest.

00:07:54His name was John Krauss.

00:07:59In the 1930s, Krauss followed scientist Carl Jansky's historic discovery of radio noise

00:08:05flowing from the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

00:08:08He was fascinated by the potential for using cosmic radio waves rather than visible light

00:08:14to observe the universe.

00:08:16In 1930, essentially all that we knew about the heavens had come from what we could see

00:08:22or photograph.

00:08:23Carl Jansky changed all that.

00:08:25A universe of radio sounds to which mankind had been deaf since time immemorial now suddenly

00:08:31burst forth in full chorus.

00:08:35During World War II, Krauss met Grote Reber, a radio engineer from Wheaton, Illinois.

00:08:42The professor had continued Carl Jansky's work, scanning the Milky Way with a homemade receiver

00:08:47and a 30-foot dish antenna built in his backyard.

00:08:51For a decade, he was the world's only active radio astronomer, producing the first maps of

00:08:57the radio sky.

00:08:58His antenna design was the forerunner of modern radio telescopes.

00:09:03He told me about his equipment and observations of the Milky Way with a contagious enthusiasm.

00:09:10If we had not been at war, I think I would have started building a radio telescope then.

00:09:16But it was not until ten years later, at the Ohio State University, that I had a chance to

00:09:21do it.

00:09:22When John Krauss joined the Ohio State faculty in 1946, he invented the helical antenna.

00:09:30The unique corkscrew-shaped design would ultimately find widespread use in satellite communication.

00:09:38In 1952, Krauss utilized the new antenna design to build his first radio telescope.

00:09:44With the help of Ohio State students, he constructed a 50-meter array of helical antennas on University

00:09:51Farmland.

00:09:52While a sky survey conducted with the Helix array proved successful, Krauss realized that

00:09:58a much bigger telescope was needed.

00:10:01Within a few years, he was ready to build the massive radio telescope that would ultimately

00:10:06capture the WOW signal.

00:10:09He had grand plans of making the telescope 2,000 feet wide.

00:10:15Money for that was not forthcoming.

00:10:17So I saw at one point he had reduced that to 720 feet wide.

00:10:23Money was not forthcoming.

00:10:25So he reduced it to 360 feet wide for the paraboloid.

00:10:32In 1956, John Krauss negotiated an agreement to utilize a 20-acre site owned by Ohio Wesleyan

00:10:39University.

00:10:41The property was dedicated for the construction and operation of the Ohio State University Radio

00:10:46Observatory.

00:10:48This large radio telescope, designed to listen for signals in deep space, was appropriately

00:10:54nicknamed the Big Ear.

00:10:57With a grant from the National Science Foundation, Krauss began construction on the Big Ear in late

00:11:021956.

00:11:04Under his supervision, university students did much of the construction work.

00:11:09Ultimately, the process took five years.

00:11:13When John Krauss got the money to build the place, he didn't have very much money.

00:11:18So between 1956 and 1963, they constructed this gigantic thing as big as three football fields,

00:11:28with the use mostly of volunteer helpers and graduate students.

00:11:33So it took a long time.

00:11:36The design of Big Ear was intended to be the most sensitive telescope for the least amount

00:11:41of money.

00:11:42And it was John Krauss' original design that did that.

00:11:46There was only one other telescope in the world that was built like it, and that was in

00:11:50France, Anse, France.

00:11:53If you can imagine here a large flat surface of aluminum foil, three acres in extent.

00:12:00At one end was a curved parabolic reflector standing on the ground, and the other end

00:12:07was a flat surface tilted up like this, which could be tilted up and down.

00:12:13And out in the middle of the ground plane, there were some things that we called feedhorns

00:12:16that looked like scoops, which were pointed toward the parabolic part, and they scooped up

00:12:21their radio waves.

00:12:22Signals came down from the sky, they bounced off this flat reflector, traveled horizontally

00:12:27across this big field of aluminum to the parabolic reflector, which focused them down to these

00:12:33scoop-like horns sitting in the middle of the ground plane.

00:12:37Unlike today's parabolic dish antennas, the Big Ear could not be electronically controlled

00:12:42to pan the sky on demand.

00:12:44Rather, it depended on the rotation of the Earth.

00:12:48The telescope could not steer in the left-right direction, it could only steer in the up and

00:12:53down direction.

00:12:54But that's okay, because we could set to a certain angle and then allow the Earth to turn.

00:13:00And as the Earth turned, then the beam swept out a little strip all around the whole sky

00:13:05in 24 hours as the Earth turned.

00:13:08And we'd sit there for a couple days, and then we'd change the angle slightly and cover another

00:13:12little stripe all around the whole sky like that.

00:13:15So in that way, we could cover the whole sky.

00:13:21When completed in the early 1960s, the Big Ear was one of the world's largest radio telescopes.

00:13:28It was designed to be a versatile survey instrument, capable of observing large sections of the

00:13:34radio sky.

00:13:35When it was finally built, using its old computer with 16K of memory to help collect the data,

00:13:44they managed for the next 10 years to do a map of the entire visible sky.

00:13:51I came here in 1963 as a graduate student working for Professor John Krause.

00:13:57I was placed in charge of analyzing the data coming from our radio telescope, which had

00:14:02just gone on the air.

00:14:04We were looking for natural sources of radio signals, not intelligent sources.

00:14:09That's why the telescope was built.

00:14:12This was in the early days of radio astronomy, when it was just really getting established

00:14:17as a mainstream science.

00:14:19And there had not been any big survey of the entire sky to discover all the radio signals

00:14:25that were there.

00:14:27People had used dish antennas.

00:14:29They'd used antennas like that to look at certain stars, certain galaxies, and study them in detail.

00:14:37But nobody had searched the whole sky.

00:14:40So we were like the pioneer explorers, and we created this huge catalog of 20,000 objects,

00:14:46and we published huge maps showing what the sky looked like to the radio telescope.

00:14:51They discovered objects like quasars and observed them, which at the time were the most distant

00:15:00objects ever observed by any telescope.

00:15:05One of the quasars, for instance, was about 12 billion light years away, which we now know

00:15:12is considerably far back, almost to the beginning of the creation of the universe in the Big

00:15:19Bang.

00:15:20They discovered 20,000 radio sources.

00:15:25Only 10,000 were known at the time.

00:15:28So it was a big deal, a big contribution to what was known in radio astronomy.

00:15:39You guys want to go down to the scope?

00:15:40Yeah, are we going up?

00:15:41Yeah.

00:15:42You want to?

00:15:43I guess.

00:15:44Shoes.

00:15:45Shoes.

00:15:46Shoes.

00:15:47I got the right shoes.

00:15:52Why do we search for ET?

00:16:12Ever since the beginning of human history, we've always looked out what's out there.

00:16:17The Green Bank Observatory is important to this area.

00:16:28It's one of the premier science facilities in the state of West Virginia.

00:16:33And as far as radio astronomy goes, it's one of the premier observatories in the world.

00:16:40You know, it's a treasure.

00:16:48Nestled deep in the hills of West Virginia, the Green Bank Observatory is home to the world's

00:16:53largest, fully steerable radio telescope.

00:16:57The site hosts eight radio telescopes and more than 60 years of scientific discovery.

00:17:04Like the Big Ear Telescope in Ohio, the Green Bank story began in the late 1950s.

00:17:11America's interest in radio astronomy was growing.

00:17:13The Green Bank site was chosen for building the first National Radio Astronomy Observatory

00:17:19in the United States.

00:17:22If you look back historically, coming out of World War II in particular, there was a lot

00:17:26of interest in radio waves and radio technology and, of course, the beginnings of radio astronomy

00:17:33got started.

00:17:34So people started listening to the cosmos, listening to the sky.

00:17:37If you move forward up into the 1950s, late 1950s by then, you had radio astronomy was an

00:17:43actual science.

00:17:44There was places around the world that were studying radio astronomy.

00:17:49Certainly if you look over to Europe and Asia, Russia was already building significant radio

00:17:53telescopes at the time.

00:17:55The Netherlands was already building significant radio telescopes, and other countries were

00:17:58starting to look at it.

00:18:00Within this country, although radio astronomy was acknowledged as a field of science, there

00:18:06wasn't any significant radio telescope that the astronomers could use.

00:18:11Instead, there was a lot of fantastic instruments, but kind of built in people's backyards, built

00:18:16in people's laboratories.

00:18:18So in 1956, they started searching for a place to put this new national radio

00:18:24astronomy observatory.

00:18:26And there were a lot of criteria.

00:18:28I mean, radio astronomy is a very sensitive science.

00:18:32The signals are very weak, so you had to look for a place that didn't have a lot of people.

00:18:37You know, people are noisy, and they build things that are noisy, especially in the radio

00:18:43spectrum.

00:18:44So they wanted a low population area.

00:18:47They wanted it to be free of things like overhead, high tension power lines, because those things

00:18:53can create noise.

00:18:55And you know, several other criteria that scientific staff sort of shortlisted to about 29 sites

00:19:03up and down the East Coast.

00:19:05And it turned out that Green Bank, West Virginia was the ideal or most ideal place.

00:19:12So, in 1957, the Green Bank site was dedicated, and we started building telescopes.

00:19:22As telescopes began to rise from the ground up, the advantages of having a national radio

00:19:27astronomy observatory in rural West Virginia quickly became apparent.

00:19:33Green Bank soon attracted professional radio astronomers, including those interested in

00:19:38a new subset of astronomy, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, also known as SETI.

00:19:45The reason a lot of astronomers came here in the early years of NRAO is, first of all, we

00:19:53were building the biggest and the best instruments in the world.

00:19:57And we were pushing the boundaries of what we do radio telescopes could accomplish and radio

00:20:02receivers could accomplish.

00:20:05One of the best things that happened when the idea of a National Radio Astronomy Observatory

00:20:10was first decided was this idea of radio quiet zones.

00:20:16So now you have a piece of land that's beginning to build a lot of radio telescopes, and you

00:20:21have legal guarantees around it that you're not going to see a lot of noise like you would

00:20:25anywhere else that might build a radio telescope.

00:20:28As soon as you have those two pieces, you have a very obvious location to come if you

00:20:32want to go look for weird signals, frankly.

00:20:35You don't want to do that someplace where there might be a lot of other noise that you have

00:20:38to find it through.

00:20:40And so the existence of a National Radio Astronomy Observatory combined with the radio quiet zones

00:20:45around here made this a perfect place for a lot of radio astronomers to come, including

00:20:50Frank Drake and many of the other pioneers of radio astronomy in this country.

00:20:54Dr. Frank Drake, a radio astronomer regarded as the father of modern SETI, was a young staff

00:21:01astronomer at Green Bank in 1960.

00:21:04He devised an experiment using interstellar radio waves to search for signs of intelligent

00:21:09life on distant planets.

00:21:11Drake called his experiment Project OSMA.

00:21:16Conducted with one of Green Bank's 85-foot telescopes, it was the first modern search

00:21:22for extraterrestrial intelligence.

00:21:24It was an experiment to literally go out and listen, let's go see if we can find signals

00:21:31from another intelligent life out there.

00:21:34So in this particular case, Project OSMA was using radio waves, so the same type of technology

00:21:40we use today with the Breakthrough Listen Project.

00:21:43Frank had to spend many, many hours per star to just look to get the level of sensitivity

00:21:47he thought he would need in order to see a signal.

00:21:49He pieced all of that together to just see for the first time ever, let's just go take

00:21:54a measurement in a very scientific manner to see if we can see a signal from alien life.

00:22:00Obviously, he didn't see anything.

00:22:01If he did, this would be a very different conversation we're having.

00:22:04So this is the Drake Lounge.

00:22:16You can see it's furnished 1960s decor all the way, all the original furnishings and decorations.

00:22:24So it looks basically exactly as it did back in 1960 when Frank Drake and all his colleagues

00:22:28gathered here to discuss the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

00:22:33Frank Drake was not the only famous scientist here.

00:22:35There were famous scientists from Carl Sagan to Philip Morrison.

00:22:38So the fun thing we always try to do is say, hey, which chair did Carl Sagan sit in?

00:22:43So it's sort of neat history about this place.

00:22:49In 1961, following his experience with Project OSMA, Frank Drake organized a meeting at Green

00:22:55Bank to discuss the possibility of searching for intelligent extraterrestrial life.

00:23:01In preparation for this meeting, he created an equation that laid the groundwork for a

00:23:05meaningful scientific dialogue about finding ET.

00:23:10It became known as the Drake Equation.

00:23:14At that time, there are very few people in the world who are interested in the search for

00:23:17extraterrestrial intelligence.

00:23:19So Frank Drake being one of them, he started thinking about, you know, what are all the factors

00:23:24that influence the probability of life elsewhere?

00:23:27So he was starting to think about things like star formation and exoplanets per star and things

00:23:32like that.

00:23:33So he thought, well, this actually fits into the form of an equation.

00:23:38He just started writing these factors down and saying, you know, this is what it's going

00:23:42to take.

00:23:43We have to know, well, we have to know a whole lot of things, but we have to know about how

00:23:46many planets are there out there in the universe, for example.

00:23:48Of those planets, how many could actually sustain life?

00:23:51And you have to piece all of these factors together and it makes an equation, an absolutely

00:23:57beautiful and fairly timeless equation, which is the Drake Equation.

00:24:02What's been amazing about the Drake Equation is certainly you can take a look at it now,

00:24:06many, many years later.

00:24:08It's really still the equation that you need in order to look and say, what is the probability

00:24:12of finding this?

00:24:13L is a lifetime of a communicating civilization.

00:24:18We only have one example of such a communicating civilization, and that's us.

00:24:24So people try and estimate, you know, how long do you think a civilization like ourselves would

00:24:29last?

00:24:30Would it last 50 years, 100 years, 500 years, a million years?

00:24:35That sort of determines how many civilizations you're going to detect, because the longer they're

00:24:40out there, the longer they're communicating, and the more likely it is that you'll detect their

00:24:43signals.

00:24:44What Frank did was consider a way to theorize the potential for the existence of an extraterrestrial

00:24:57civilization.

00:24:59A lot of his numbers, a lot of his assumptions were sort of proving we're correct, or very

00:25:05close to being correct.

00:25:07So that narrows the guesstimate factor down to a more knowing, true figure.

00:25:16You're still talking about 100,000 potential sites that you have to look at in this huge

00:25:22galaxy.

00:25:24Still becomes a daunting task.

00:25:26SETI's always been about good science.

00:25:31They have to make assumptions about what they're looking for.

00:25:34That's a really difficult thing to do when you don't know what you're looking for.

00:25:39So they've always been trying to do the best science they can with the equipment and telescopes

00:25:47and things that they have.

00:25:48SETI is such an integral part of the history of Greenbank Observatory that you can't come

00:25:57here as an astronomer and spend any time and not start hearing, not just about what's happened

00:26:02here on site with SETI, but also what's happened just around the country and around the world

00:26:06with SETI, including things like the Big Ear Telescope, WowSignal, and all of those types

00:26:10of studies that have been done.

00:26:15Oh, this would be some of the equipment, the radio equipment that they used to modulate

00:26:33the data, to collect that data with a radio, what we might call a radio, except that it

00:26:41monitors many frequencies at the same time.

00:26:45And just for fun, if you want to modulate some of that information and put it on a screen,

00:26:50you can use an oscilloscope.

00:26:52That's why old science fiction movies look so great, because they have those oscilloscopes

00:26:57running.

00:26:58From 1963 until the early 1970s, Ohio State's Big Ear Telescope conducted a survey that covered

00:27:0770 percent of the entire sky.

00:27:10Their comprehensive Ohio All-Sky Survey produced detailed maps of the radio sky that proved useful

00:27:17to astronomers throughout the world.

00:27:20But by 1972, budget shortages forced the National Science Foundation to terminate funding for the

00:27:27Big Ear.

00:27:29That decision closed one highly successful chapter in the Big Ear's history, and began another.

00:27:35In the early 70s, they ran out of money.

00:27:39The National Science Foundation stopped funding them.

00:27:45New areas of astronomy and new telescopes were being built, and that's when Bob Dixon put

00:27:51in a new receiver better suited to finding the narrow band signals that people think might

00:27:57be out there if other civilizations are broadcasting at us.

00:28:04In 1971, Bob Dixon attended a large gathering of scientists and engineers at NASA's Ames Research

00:28:11Center in Mountain View, California.

00:28:14The group shared ideas about the possibility of detecting signals from extraterrestrial civilizations.

00:28:21Their findings were published in a report titled Project Cyclops.

00:28:25The goal of Cyclops was to assess what it would take to mount a large search for radio signals

00:28:31from interstellar civilizations.

00:28:34Widely circulated by NASA, the final Cyclops report strongly influenced the development of

00:28:39a SETI program at the Big Ear radio observatory.

00:28:42I became very interested in SETI at the time.

00:28:48Funding for the radio observatory nationally was lost.

00:28:52We realized we have a wonderful radio telescope here, and this would be a wonderful purpose

00:28:57to put it toward as the first large telescope dedicated to searching for extraterrestrial

00:29:02life.

00:29:03We have a perfectly good staff of people who would be willing to volunteer, and we attracted

00:29:07more volunteers.

00:29:09I was actually a volunteer at the Ohio State University radio observatory.

00:29:14My job was as a radio astronomer, specifically looking at the computer printouts from the radio

00:29:22telescope.

00:29:23So we had the equipment, and we had the people, and we reconfigured some things, and we put

00:29:28it together, and we started that search.

00:29:32Unlike the All-Sky Survey, which had utilized wideband radio waves to search for naturally occurring

00:29:38signals, the Big Ear SETI program demanded a much more narrow focus.

00:29:43Natural signals, they sound the same no matter where you tune your radio.

00:29:48If you had, like, your AM radio, it would sound the same hissing sound no matter where.

00:29:52On the other hand, an intelligent signal, we believe, would be tuned in only at one point

00:29:58on the dial.

00:29:59And that's what we're looking for, a narrowband signal.

00:30:02Narrowband signals are artificial.

00:30:04There are not very many things in nature that make narrowband signals.

00:30:09The Big Ear SETI program began in December 1973.

00:30:14With no external funding and a volunteer staff, the program and equipment were set up to operate

00:30:21with as few people as possible.

00:30:24In just a few years, the Big Ear would make one of the most intriguing discoveries in the

00:30:29search for intelligent extraterrestrial life, a signal that continues to fascinate.

00:30:49One, two, three, four, five, four, five, seven, five, four, five, five, five, five, six,

00:31:13five, six, six, seven, seven, a half.

00:31:18From what I've been told, the WOW signal was a signal that came in, lasted for 72 seconds, and it looks, to me, like a radio source, like a real one.

00:31:35On the evening of August 15, 1977, the Big Ear Telescope was engaged in its ongoing mission, the search for narrowband radio signals.

00:31:46With its flat reflector set at a predetermined angle, the Big Ear's beam rotated with the Earth, patiently scanning a continuous strip of the night sky.

00:31:58Incoming radio waves were automatically processed by computer.

00:32:02Computer printouts provided a chronological record of the alphanumeric data for later analysis.

00:32:07When we set up the receivers and the computers, we did it with the purpose of not having to have a large group of people maneuver data and do various things, because that was time-consuming, costly, and so forth.

00:32:26We built everything into the receiver and the computer to do things on their own.

00:32:32We had, at that time, a 50-channel receiver, so we had 50 different receivers.

00:32:39You can imagine they have 15 radios sitting on your counter, each one tuned to a slightly different frequency.

00:32:44And the output of all of those 50 was going into the computer we had at the time.

00:32:49And we had written programs to record carefully each of those 50 signals, and the intensity of each of those was then printed out on a sheet of paper.

00:32:58Channels 1 through 50 running across the paper.

00:33:02Shortly after 11 p.m., the Big Ear registered a signal many times stronger than the normal levels of radio noise.

00:33:10The signal lasted for 72 seconds, rising and falling as it passed through the Big Ear's beam.

00:33:18No one was present to witness the event, but the computer system recorded the sudden escalation in signal strength,

00:33:24and the data printout clearly showed the tremendous spike in intensity.

00:33:28The moment passed, and Big Ear continued scanning the sky throughout the night.

00:33:35There was nobody there, typically, to look at it.

00:33:40And then, at that time, the computer, after it printed everything out, would be taken off to Jerry's house,

00:33:45and he'd look at it, and he'd look through it and see what he could find.

00:33:48Computer records were delivered to my home every, oh, about two times a week,

00:33:53a printout that contained three or four days' worth of observations.

00:33:57What you get when you're looking at data from a radio telescope is just a big ream of paper with numbers on it

00:34:06representing what the signals were at various frequencies.

00:34:12When I would get home from teaching or at night after supper,

00:34:17I would sit down with the computer printout and start to look for anything interesting.

00:34:25The data that included August 15, 1977, and two or three days past that,

00:34:33just a few pages into that, I saw the pattern 6EQUJ5.

00:34:39And I saw, okay, the numbers are increasing, hitting a peak, and then dropping off.

00:34:47That's exactly what we expect for a strong, narrow-band signal.

00:34:52Since its discovery, there has been a popular notion that the WOW signal can somehow be decoded,

00:34:58that its alphanumeric sequence harbors some hidden meaning, or message.

00:35:03In truth, the use of numbers and letters was a practical method

00:35:07for describing the intensity of radio signals observed by the Big Ear.

00:35:12The computer printouts generated by the Big Ear featured 50 columns,

00:35:17one for every channel being monitored.

00:35:20Each column had room for a single digit.

00:35:23Low-intensity signals were assigned a 1.

00:35:26Stronger signals were assigned a higher number.

00:35:30Because the printout columns were limited to single digits,

00:35:33signals stronger than a 9 were assigned a letter value.

00:35:37A 10 became A, 11 became B, and so on.

00:35:42This simple method clearly demonstrated the intensity of the WOW signal.

00:35:47In purely numerical terms, the WOW signal was 30 times higher

00:35:51than the lowest levels of random radio noise.

00:35:55We tried to think of, how could this be a fluke of some kind?

00:35:59It was the biggest thing we ever saw.

00:36:01Within 10 seconds or less, with my red pen,

00:36:06I circled the 60-Q-U-J-5 and wrote the word WOW exclamation point.

00:36:13And it's fortunate, I got to thinking about this later,

00:36:16that WOW was kind of like an expletive, but a good expletive,

00:36:21and so it didn't have to be deleted.

00:36:23In searching for E.T., the WOW signal is

00:36:27the best candidate that's ever been seen.

00:36:31The thing about the WOW signal is that it had

00:36:34the characteristic shape, the change of intensity with time,

00:36:39followed what you would expect from some transmitter

00:36:41that's up there in the sky moving with the stars.

00:36:44That's what made it so appealing,

00:36:46so different from the kind of normal interference that you get.

00:36:51Amazed by the WOW signal's intensity,

00:36:54Jerry Eman continued reviewing the computer printouts

00:36:57from the night of August 15th and the days immediately after.

00:37:02He was searching for evidence

00:37:03that the incredibly strong signal had repeated.

00:37:07I was especially interested to see

00:37:09if that same signal came back a day later,

00:37:11which would mean in the same position in the sky.

00:37:15It didn't.

00:37:17It didn't appear on the third or fourth days either.

00:37:22After I got through looking at all the printouts,

00:37:25I called Dr. John Krause and said,

00:37:28we've got something interesting here.

00:37:31The WOW signal presented many questions.

00:37:35Was it a natural celestial phenomenon?

00:37:39Could it have been a man-made signal

00:37:41from a passing satellite?

00:37:44Was it an artificial signal

00:37:45from an intelligent extraterrestrial civilization?

00:37:50John Krause, director of the Ohio State Radio Observatory,

00:37:54and his assistant director, Bob Dixon,

00:37:56immediately began to investigate

00:37:58and eliminate the possibilities.

00:38:01This is the scientific method.

00:38:03To discover something extraordinary,

00:38:06you need extraordinary proof.

00:38:07And so we wanted to eliminate everything else we could.

00:38:09Now, interference is the common situation

00:38:12with radio astronomers.

00:38:14But we have interference all the time

00:38:16to the radio telescope.

00:38:17But we know what it is.

00:38:18We recognize it.

00:38:19We've done it for so long.

00:38:21We recognize it for what it is.

00:38:23And the characteristics of local interference,

00:38:26say, coming from the Earth,

00:38:27is totally different.

00:38:29Interference pulses on and off.

00:38:31It looks like a little static jumping up and down.

00:38:33Never does it follow the curve

00:38:35of the radio telescope like that

00:38:37because what that means is

00:38:38the telescope was scanning across that area in the sky

00:38:41and it went across whatever was sending that signal

00:38:44and it went back down.

00:38:45It followed exactly the theoretical curve

00:38:48that it should follow

00:38:49for the shape of the antenna pattern of the telescope.

00:38:52That's another astounding piece of evidence.

00:38:54Dr. Krauss did the bulk of the investigation

00:38:58as to what it could be.

00:39:01He looked at stars, galaxies, planets, satellites,

00:39:07and anything else that could have sent the signal

00:39:10and didn't find anything.

00:39:14Is it equipment malfunction?

00:39:16No.

00:39:17We ruled that out.

00:39:18Is it some planet or star or something?

00:39:21No.

00:39:21I mean, one could say it might be

00:39:23an Earth satellite of some kind,

00:39:25but the strikes are against that

00:39:28because we're using a frequency

00:39:29that's protected internationally for any transmitter.

00:39:33Nobody's allowed to transmit there.

00:39:35It's reserved for scientific research.

00:39:37So for a satellite to be transmitting there,

00:39:39they'd have to be disobeying that rule.

00:39:41But the fact is, if it's a satellite,

00:39:43it has to be moving in the sky.

00:39:46It would have to be moving at exactly the right rate.

00:39:48And that's just really not very practical

00:39:50to think about that.

00:39:53Is it a hoax?

00:39:54Well, Jerry and I are the only ones

00:39:57that could have pulled this hoax

00:39:58by fiddling it up with the computer program.

00:40:00And I know I didn't do it,

00:40:01and I'm pretty sure he didn't do it.

00:40:04So we knew it was there.

00:40:05The Big Ear continued to search

00:40:09the same section of sky for 30 days

00:40:11following the Wow! signal discovery.

00:40:14Eventually, it scanned the area again

00:40:17for 70 more days.

00:40:19The signal never reappeared.

00:40:22And what was even more puzzling is

00:40:24we actually had two beams in the sky at the time,

00:40:28slightly a few minutes apart from each other.

00:40:30And when it went through one beam,

00:40:33we saw it,

00:40:33and it went through the other beam,

00:40:34we didn't see it.

00:40:36So that means that the signal turned off

00:40:38at the time we were looking at it.

00:40:41And that's even more exciting

00:40:42because no natural signal would have done that.

00:40:47The Big Ear design featured two large feed horns

00:40:50situated side by side

00:40:52near one end of the telescope's aluminum ground plane.

00:40:55The dual horns acted as funnels

00:40:58for the radio waves

00:40:59bouncing off the parabolic reflector,

00:41:02essentially giving the Big Ear

00:41:03two beams for observing and capturing data.

00:41:07After passing through one beam,

00:41:09a radio wave would be picked up

00:41:11in the second beam a few minutes later.

00:41:14The Wow! signal's failure

00:41:15to appear in the second beam

00:41:17did cause excitement.

00:41:19It also caused ambiguity.

00:41:22If we were to pick up the Wow! signal today,

00:41:24you know, you would be able to,

00:41:26at least with some study experiments,

00:41:27you would be able to follow up right away.

00:41:29Right away.

00:41:30You would immediately start looking at it again.

00:41:32Now, you could say,

00:41:34yes, but they did that at Ohio State.

00:41:36They did.

00:41:36They followed up with one more observation.

00:41:39That was an automatic feature

00:41:41of the antenna they were using.

00:41:42So two minutes after they find the Wow! signal,

00:41:44they've looked at it again,

00:41:46and that's it.

00:41:47But of course, today,

00:41:48you would keep looking at it,

00:41:49keep looking at it,

00:41:50keep looking at it for, you know,

00:41:51minutes and minutes and minutes and minutes,

00:41:53and if you didn't find it,

00:41:55you would say it's probably interference.

00:41:57In the years since its discovery,

00:42:00the Wow! signal has been recognized worldwide

00:42:03as a significant event in the search for ET.

00:42:06Many still believe it's the best evidence to date

00:42:09of a communication

00:42:11from an intelligent extraterrestrial source.

00:42:14Others question its scientific validity.

00:42:18The Wow! signal certainly was a strong signal, right?

00:42:21There was no doubt about a signal being there.

00:42:24That's not the question.

00:42:25The question isn't, was there a signal?

00:42:26The question is, where did that signal come from?

00:42:29Did it really come from outer space?

00:42:31Did it come from something artificial?

00:42:32Did it come from something natural?

00:42:34Did it come from the Earth?

00:42:35And, of course, nobody knows.

00:42:37It remains unexplained.

00:42:39It was a highly significant signal

00:42:43that was unexpected and difficult to explain

00:42:47by natural phenomenon,

00:42:48but it was never repeated.

00:42:50It could never be verified.

00:42:53And so we're left really not knowing what caused it.

00:42:58You could imagine if an extraterrestrial civilization

00:43:01was intentionally trying to contact us,

00:43:03they wouldn't just send us one signal

00:43:05and then let it leave us hanging for, you know,

00:43:07many years wondering what that signal meant.

00:43:24This is a movie of the Galaxy M33.

00:43:29This came from the VLA in January of this year.

00:43:34What I'm looking for here is a big-colored dot

00:43:37that's not always there.

00:43:39This only is one radio picture at one frequency,

00:43:42which might be a radio signal pointed our way

00:43:46from the Galaxy M33.

00:43:49No one's ever looked at this before.

00:43:51No one's ever seen this little movie I'm playing.

00:43:55This is what I call the small SETI radio telescope

00:43:59I built in the early 1980s,

00:44:01and this displays the direction the antenna's pointing,

00:44:06and this actually controls the antenna.

00:44:09So this 12-foot dish that's feeding electrical signals

00:44:13into this is being pointed around

00:44:16by a 1944 surplus military radar pedestal.

00:44:21Where is the dish that you use with this?

00:44:24Well, the dish is outside.

00:44:26Watch your step a little bit.

00:44:38I first heard about the Ohio State Wow Signal

00:44:41when I read an article about it

00:44:43in Cosmic Search magazine,

00:44:46a small radio astronomy magazine

00:44:48being published by John Krauss,

00:44:50the founder and designer

00:44:52of the Ohio State Radio Telescope.

00:44:55He wrote an article that described this unusual

00:44:58and intriguing signal that they discovered in 1977.

00:45:02I was a data analyst, a computer jockey programmer at the time.

00:45:10This seemed so intriguing to me

00:45:13that I called the people at Ohio State,

00:45:15called Bob Dixon, I believe.

00:45:16So much to my surprise, he didn't object

00:45:20when I suggested that I'd visit Columbus, Ohio,

00:45:23and look at the radio telescope and the data personally.

00:45:29Everything I heard about the Wow Signal

00:45:31seemed more and more intriguing

00:45:33and more and more likely to be a real signal from the stars

00:45:37rather than interference.

00:45:43Since the early 1980s,

00:45:45Robert Gray has been searching for the Wow Signal.

00:45:49Like Grote-Reber several decades earlier,

00:45:52Gray searched the sky using his home-brewed equipment

00:45:55and 12-foot dish antenna stationed in his backyard.

00:45:59Along with writing the elusive Wow,

00:46:02which chronicles his searches,

00:46:04Gray has hunted the Wow Signal

00:46:06at the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

00:46:09in Massachusetts,

00:46:11the Very Large Array in Socorro, New Mexico,

00:46:14and the Mount Pleasant Radio Observatory

00:46:17at the University of Tasmania.

00:46:19The Ohio State Wow Signal was only seen once.

00:46:24It was present for six, ten-second measurements,

00:46:28so it wasn't just a quick flash,

00:46:31but it wasn't seen twice for 72 seconds

00:46:37like a constant celestial source should be.

00:46:40This is a flaw in the Wow Signal,

00:46:44that it was only seen in one beam.

00:46:47Some astronomers believe the Wow Signal

00:46:49appeared in only one of the Big Ear's beams

00:46:52because it was man-made interference

00:46:54or perhaps some sort of natural anomaly.

00:46:57But an opposing school of thought suggests another possibility.

00:47:02A radio signal from an intelligent extraterrestrial source

00:47:06might appear intermittently.

00:47:08It's possible that the Wow Signal didn't show up in the second horn

00:47:13because it was some kind of sweeping signal

00:47:17like a cat's-eye beam of a transmitter

00:47:20that was sweeping across the sky

00:47:22and swept across the Ohio State beam

00:47:25in merely a few minutes.

00:47:28Most people involved in searching for extraterrestrial intelligence

00:47:34have one of two scenarios in mind.

00:47:37One is a beacon that's shining all the time.

00:47:40So anytime we happen to look at a certain spot in the sky,

00:47:43we'll see it, if we're tuned to the right frequency.

00:47:46That's a terribly expensive thing to do.

00:47:50The amount of power is way more than all the power on Earth

00:47:53to operate a beacon that shines in all directions all the time.

00:47:57The other scenario is a big antenna that points our way every so often,

00:48:02a directed beam, and that uses a lot less power.

00:48:07That's the reason why big radio telescopes are so big

00:48:11is that they see a smaller spot in the sky.

00:48:14And for a transmitter, that means that they're only shooting the power

00:48:18towards a small spot in the sky.

00:48:19So you need a lot less power.

00:48:21The drawback to a directed antenna pointing at us

00:48:24is it's probably not going to be pointing at us all the time.

00:48:28That's another possible explanation

00:48:30for something like the wow signal being intermittent.

00:48:35Despite his continued searches and long-term effort,

00:48:39Gray has not been able to find the wow signal again.

00:48:42As far as I can tell,

00:48:45having talked to nearly everyone in the field,

00:48:47no one else has ever looked for it.

00:48:50No one except for me has tried to follow up on it.

00:48:56And my observations are admittedly those of a non-professional

00:49:02and might very well have had some flaws.

00:49:07The professional astronomical communities

00:49:09never really looked hard for this thing.

00:49:13It might be worth doing so.

00:49:14People will ask me at parties

00:49:35when they hear what kind of work I do.

00:49:36They say, well, are you close?

00:49:38I don't know what that means.

00:49:39Are you close?

00:49:40Because until you've found a signal that you can verify,

00:49:43and that is clearly extraterrestrial in origin,

00:49:46you've not had any close calls.

00:49:49You've not had any successes.

00:49:50You've been looking, looking, looking.

00:49:51It's like Captain Cook in the South Pacific in the 1770s.

00:49:56Right?

00:49:56Every day he just sees more water around the ship.

00:49:59And so what are you, close?

00:50:00Well, you don't know whether he's close.

00:50:01As a senior astronomer for the SETI Institute,

00:50:06Seth Shostak has been an active participant

00:50:08in the Institute's SETI observing programs.

00:50:12He has written and lectured extensively

00:50:14about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence,

00:50:17including the WOW signal.

00:50:20The WOW signal, of course, continues to intrigue people,

00:50:23and maybe people think that it's our best case

00:50:26for a signal from extraterrestrial intelligence.

00:50:30I find that maybe a little bit, I don't know,

00:50:33overstated to say it's our best case.

00:50:35It's an intriguing case because it's a mystery.

00:50:36We don't know what it was.

00:50:38But then again, if you look back into that era

00:50:41in the late 1970s,

00:50:42there were other SETI experiments running as well,

00:50:45and they would come up with mysterious signals as well.

00:50:48They would come up with signals that were seen only once

00:50:50and that had the hallmarks of the kind of signal

00:50:53you're looking for.

00:50:54But they didn't have the great name WOW signal.

00:50:58They were just sort of anonymous signals

00:51:00coming from a certain spot on the sky.

00:51:03I've written occasionally about a signal

00:51:05that we picked up in 1997,

00:51:06which was the, to my mind,

00:51:09the most interesting candidate signal

00:51:11that we've ever gotten.

00:51:13And for most of the day,

00:51:14it looked like it was the real deal.

00:51:16Turned out it wasn't.

00:51:16It was due to a solar research satellite,

00:51:19a European solar research satellite.

00:51:21SOHO is the name of the satellite.

00:51:23But for about 16 hours or so,

00:51:25we weren't sure.

00:51:26We thought it might be the real deal.

00:51:27And that was actually a very interesting event.

00:51:29It was a good thing it happened in my mind

00:51:31because it showed us what happens

00:51:32if you actually pick up a signal

00:51:34that is what you're looking for.

00:51:37The WOW signal may be a case

00:51:38of the triumph of branding over product, perhaps.

00:51:43Whether it's the best case of a signal from ET

00:51:47or an unintentional triumph of branding,

00:51:51the WOW signal may be the most widely recognized event

00:51:54in SETI's short history.

00:51:57In the years since the WOW discovery,

00:51:59SETI experiments have continued,

00:52:02benefiting greatly from advancements in technology

00:52:04and more sophisticated search techniques.

00:52:07Still, there are those who feel

00:52:09we have barely scratched the surface.

00:52:12It's hard to describe

00:52:14how modest our searches have been so far.

00:52:18We've typically only looked for a minute or two

00:52:21in any one direction and any one frequency.

00:52:24It's entirely possible

00:52:26that there's beamed transmissions

00:52:29pointed at us from other stars

00:52:31that if we happened to point a big antenna

00:52:35in the right direction,

00:52:37tuned to the right frequency,

00:52:38we would hear.

00:52:40We simply haven't conducted a long enough search yet

00:52:45at enough different frequencies

00:52:47to even know if that's possible.

00:52:51Most study experiments,

00:52:53you spend very little time

00:52:54looking at any given direction

00:52:55at any given spot on the radio dial.

00:52:58Seconds, minutes, no more than that.

00:53:00And you might say,

00:53:01well, that doesn't sound like a very good strategy.

00:53:03Maybe they do broadcast in our direction,

00:53:05but only once a day

00:53:06or once a week or once a year.

00:53:08You're going to miss them, most likely,

00:53:10and that's true.

00:53:11But if you're doing this experiment,

00:53:13you have to decide what's the better strategy.

00:53:14Are you going to use that time

00:53:16to just keep looking in the same direction

00:53:18at the same frequencies,

00:53:19or are you going to look at another star system?

00:53:23It could be that somebody

00:53:24is not incessantly targeting the Earth,

00:53:28because after all,

00:53:28they probably don't know

00:53:29that Homo sapiens is here, right?

00:53:31Unless they're within 70 light years,

00:53:32they haven't picked up the kind of radar

00:53:34or FM radio or television signals

00:53:37that would betray our presence.

00:53:39They know there's life on Earth

00:53:41because of the oxygen in our atmosphere,

00:53:42but they don't know

00:53:43that there's any intelligent life.

00:53:44So, you know, how much money would you spend

00:53:47to relentlessly target some other planet

00:53:49with a signal

00:53:50if all you knew was that it had biology?

00:53:52Maybe all it's got is microbes.

00:53:54That's the situation that obtained here

00:53:56for a couple of billion years.

00:53:57So, you know,

00:53:58maybe you don't spend a lot of money there,

00:53:59but maybe what you do

00:54:00is you have a long list

00:54:02of all the planets that you know have life,

00:54:04and you just target them all sequentially.

00:54:06You give them a quick ping, right?

00:54:08You give them a ping,

00:54:08and then you come back two weeks later,

00:54:10and you ping them again,

00:54:10or maybe two years later,

00:54:11or two hundred years later,

00:54:13and you just ping them occasionally

00:54:14and see if anything happens.

00:54:15And, you know,

00:54:16the wow signal could have been a ping.

00:54:18That's certainly a suggestion.

00:54:20That's just one possibility.

00:54:21There are many possibilities,

00:54:23and unfortunately,

00:54:24that doesn't turn it into science

00:54:25until you can prove

00:54:26that one of them is true.

00:54:30Scientific opinions continue to differ

00:54:32about the origin of the wow signal.

00:54:34Even with the controversy,

00:54:36it remains an extraordinary event

00:54:38in the broader search

00:54:40for extraterrestrial intelligence.

00:54:43I think probably the majority

00:54:45of astronomers think

00:54:46that it was just some

00:54:47naturally occurring phenomenon

00:54:49that just happened once.

00:54:50We're left really not knowing

00:54:53what caused it.

00:54:55We can't really be sure

00:54:56that it was an extraterrestrial civilization.

00:55:00SETI is based on the presumption

00:55:01that we are not the only

00:55:03civilized society in the galaxy,

00:55:06and that there are civilized societies

00:55:08in the galaxy that are willing

00:55:10and able to communicate with us.

00:55:13There are two primary paths

00:55:16by which we are looking

00:55:17for life in the universe.

00:55:19One is a systematic,

00:55:21more scientific path.

00:55:23The first step

00:55:24that you might want to know is,

00:55:26well, are there planets

00:55:27around other stars at all?

00:55:29Then, if you know

00:55:30that there are planets

00:55:31around other stars,

00:55:31the next thing you might want

00:55:32to ask is, well,

00:55:34do those planetary systems

00:55:35look anything like our own?

00:55:37Once we find some solar systems

00:55:39like ours,

00:55:40then what we really want

00:55:41to look for are planets

00:55:42like the Earth, pale blue dots.

00:55:44So those are rocky planets

00:55:46with thin atmospheres located

00:55:49at the right distance

00:55:50from their parent star

00:55:51where they can have liquid water

00:55:52on the surface.

00:55:54And that's a lot of the way

00:55:55in which we go about science

00:55:56is we take one step at a time.

00:55:59We build upon previous advances

00:56:01in knowledge until we ultimately

00:56:02get to the final question

00:56:04that we want.

00:56:05SETI, on the other hand,

00:56:07is kind of like taking a novel

00:56:08and going back to the last chapter

00:56:10and reading that

00:56:11and finding out what happens.

00:56:13It's kind of cheating in some sense.

00:56:15It's not going through the whole book.

00:56:18So you're just trying

00:56:19to look directly

00:56:20for intelligent civilizations

00:56:22immediately without having

00:56:24to go through all

00:56:25this systematic process

00:56:27of leading to the discovery of life.

00:56:30The opinions of SETI

00:56:32and scientists that are searching

00:56:34for life range from

00:56:35it's a crazy thing to do

00:56:37to it's a reasonable thing to do.

00:56:41SETI is only for patient people

00:56:43because you can search a lifetime

00:56:46and never find anything

00:56:47but it's still so interesting

00:56:49and important that you always do it.

00:56:51So that's why people like Jerry

00:56:52and I get involved

00:56:53in doing things like this.

00:56:55The big danger in SETI

00:56:57is called anthropomorphism.

00:56:59Looking at things

00:57:00from the viewpoint of man

00:57:01because it's the only way we can.

00:57:03We try not to think

00:57:04about specific signals

00:57:05but look at general signals

00:57:07which are narrow band

00:57:08which would be characteristic

00:57:09of any of such signals.

00:57:10I think that the wow signal

00:57:14even though it couldn't be identified,

00:57:19couldn't be verified,

00:57:21was a kickstart

00:57:24to the continued search

00:57:26for extraterrestrial intelligence.

00:57:29I mean you think about

00:57:30even a young scientist,

00:57:32a young astronomer

00:57:33who is trying to decide

00:57:36what his path or her path may be.

00:57:38You read something

00:57:39about the wow signal

00:57:40and it gives you

00:57:42a whole new door to open.

00:57:44It gives you another possibility.

00:57:46We're looking for something

00:57:47that we don't know

00:57:49is there

00:57:51or if we're going to

00:57:53ever be able to detect it

00:57:54and that's a difficult thing

00:57:56to justify

00:57:57but it's also potentially

00:58:00one of the most important questions

00:58:03we ever want to answer.

00:58:05so you have this balance

00:58:07of something

00:58:09that's very high risk

00:58:10but very high gain.

00:58:12The search for extraterrestrial intelligence

00:58:15I think it's fair to say

00:58:18to some extent

00:58:19has had a stigma

00:58:20associated with it.

00:58:22The perception of SETI is

00:58:35the UFOs

00:58:36and the sightings

00:58:38and that little green man

00:58:39with big eyes

00:58:40and it's been

00:58:42potentially difficult

00:58:43to shake off

00:58:46that association.

00:58:49There's an entire culture

00:58:50of people

00:58:51that believe in UFOs

00:58:52and that we have

00:58:54in fact been contacted

00:58:55by aliens

00:58:56many, many times.

00:58:58Of course

00:58:58there's a lot of excitement

00:59:00around the idea

00:59:01of aliens,

00:59:02of SETI,

00:59:04of any of that

00:59:04because how could it not be

00:59:06just incredibly exciting

00:59:07to think that there is

00:59:09some other race out there

00:59:10some other very exotic

00:59:11type of race

00:59:13out there in the universe

00:59:13and the idea that

00:59:15hey we'll be able

00:59:15to interact with them

00:59:16is just really, really enticing

00:59:17and really, really exciting.

00:59:19We get a lot of UFO reports

00:59:22at Perkins

00:59:23in one form or another

00:59:25and I have to say

00:59:27it's always, always, always

00:59:32some natural event.

00:59:34There was one thing

00:59:35that I saw one time

00:59:36I had no idea what it was.

00:59:37These beautiful

00:59:38white points of light

00:59:41darting around,

00:59:43darting around.

00:59:44There was just

00:59:44a whole lot of them.

00:59:45So I got in my car

00:59:47and I drove toward it.

00:59:48What was it?

00:59:49It was a bunch of seagulls

00:59:51dancing around a billboard.

00:59:54The billboard lights

00:59:55tend to point up

00:59:56and it was the lights

00:59:57reflecting off their stomachs.

01:00:00Thought I had it

01:00:01but it was seagulls.

01:00:02The sensationalism that surrounds

01:00:06SETI research

01:00:07can be pretty amazing

01:00:08and Green Bank

01:00:09has not been immune to it.

01:00:12When the 300-foot telescope

01:00:14collapsed in 1988

01:00:16there were,

01:00:18albeit tabloid,

01:00:21newspaper headlines

01:00:22that said

01:00:23aliens destroy radio telescope

01:00:26in Green Bank.

01:00:27That's just proof of

01:00:29the need for people

01:00:32to think about

01:00:33the fantastical,

01:00:34to be exposed

01:00:36to the fantastical.

01:00:39If somebody could come up

01:00:41with one thing,

01:00:42one time,

01:00:43that they could describe to me

01:00:46that I couldn't figure out

01:00:48what it was,

01:00:49then I might be

01:00:51more interested

01:00:52in this kind of thing.

01:00:53Human beings

01:00:57love to wonder why.

01:01:00Other beings

01:01:01out there in the universe

01:01:02is just so tantalizing,

01:01:04so exciting

01:01:05to think,

01:01:06you know,

01:01:06there's something else out there.

01:01:07We're not alone.

01:01:09As a skeptic,

01:01:11as a scientist,

01:01:12I'm a skeptic

01:01:12and as a skeptic

01:01:13I have to say

01:01:14that I don't believe

01:01:15there's been any real

01:01:16definitive evidence

01:01:17of extraterrestrial life

01:01:19contacting us.

01:01:20Of course,

01:01:21which begs the question,

01:01:22does that mean

01:01:23that such life is rare?

01:01:25A lot of people

01:01:25are familiar with

01:01:26the Fermi paradox,

01:01:28which simply put

01:01:30is if intelligent life

01:01:32is out there,

01:01:33where are they?

01:01:34Why haven't they contacted us?

01:01:36There are various solutions

01:01:38to this apparent paradox,

01:01:40but one of them

01:01:41is simply that

01:01:42there is no other

01:01:43intelligent life out there,

01:01:44that we are the only

01:01:45intelligent life

01:01:46in our galaxy.

01:01:48If I were a betting man,

01:01:49and I'm not,

01:01:50but if I were,

01:01:51I would bet that

01:01:52simple life

01:01:54is probably fairly common

01:01:55and we will probably

01:01:57find it,

01:01:58maybe not in my lifetime,

01:02:00but certainly

01:02:01within the next

01:02:01few hundred years.

01:02:03One of the problems

01:02:04with SETI

01:02:05is that you can't

01:02:05guarantee success.

01:02:07If you decide

01:02:08that, you know,

01:02:08as a young astronomer

01:02:09you're going to go

01:02:10study exoplanets,

01:02:11you can be sure

01:02:11you're going to find some.

01:02:13You're going to learn

01:02:13something new.

01:02:14You can't miss.

01:02:16We found thousands

01:02:16of exoplanets,

01:02:17so of course

01:02:18you're going to find some.

01:02:19With SETI,

01:02:20there's no guarantee.

01:02:22It may be that you spend,

01:02:23you know, decades,

01:02:24maybe this takes centuries,

01:02:26maybe more,

01:02:26who knows,

01:02:27to find something.

01:02:29In all that time

01:02:29you didn't find anything.

01:02:31And you've got to be able

01:02:31to take that.

01:02:32You've got to be able

01:02:33to say,

01:02:33look, I'm down with that.

01:02:35I can handle that.

01:02:37I personally feel

01:02:38that it is entirely possible

01:02:40that we will discover

01:02:41life beyond our own.

01:02:45Can I definitively say

01:02:46that it's going to happen

01:02:48in my lifetime?

01:02:49No, I can't.

01:02:51Do I think it will happen?

01:02:53I absolutely do think

01:02:55that it will happen.

01:02:55I do believe

01:02:56that there's life

01:02:57elsewhere beyond our planet.

01:03:00How advanced that life may be

01:03:03is a question,

01:03:04but, you know,

01:03:05certainly if we have progressed

01:03:07to the level of intelligence

01:03:10that we are,

01:03:11and some argue that,

01:03:13well, maybe we aren't either,

01:03:15I can't imagine

01:03:18that other potential life forms

01:03:22haven't progressed

01:03:22far beyond where we are.

01:03:25Will we discover life

01:03:27that is beyond

01:03:28just the cellular life

01:03:29and moving on to something

01:03:31that is intelligent?

01:03:33Boy, you know,

01:03:34it's such a guess.

01:03:37I think you have to be honest

01:03:46with people

01:03:47from whom you are asking

01:03:49for funding.

01:03:51The difficulties are great here,

01:03:53and the chances of success

01:03:55are very limited.

01:03:58And you probably won't find anything.

01:04:01Funding of basic research

01:04:07seems to be a challenge,

01:04:10especially in this day and age.

01:04:12We can't say

01:04:13that we're creating anything.

01:04:15We're not building widgets.

01:04:17We're not selling something for retail.

01:04:20We're doing basic research.

01:04:22And basic research sometimes

01:04:24is a hard sell.

01:04:26Americans like a result.

01:04:28You know,

01:04:28they like something

01:04:29they can hold in their hands.

01:04:31Right there.

01:04:33Careful.

01:04:36There's a tag in there.

01:04:37It's just loose.

01:04:37Is that Einstein right there?

01:04:38Yeah.

01:04:41Ever since 2012,

01:04:43the observatory has faced

01:04:44some issues

01:04:46in terms of decreased funding.

01:04:50As the first

01:04:51national radio astronomy observatory

01:04:53in the United States,

01:04:55Green Bank had always been

01:04:56fully funded

01:04:57by the National Science Foundation.

01:04:59But changing federal priorities

01:05:02created funding challenges

01:05:03over the years.

01:05:05In 2012,

01:05:07the National Science Foundation

01:05:09recommended a gradual defunding

01:05:11of the Green Bank facility.

01:05:13You know,

01:05:14the potential is there

01:05:15that one of the options

01:05:17is dismantling the telescope.

01:05:18You know,

01:05:19we disappear.

01:05:21And the research

01:05:23that's done here

01:05:23at Green Bank

01:05:24could disappear.

01:05:27There's nobody

01:05:28I'm aware of

01:05:30that would like

01:05:31to see Green Bank close.

01:05:32And I mean that

01:05:34all the way up

01:05:34to the people

01:05:35that are making

01:05:35the funding decisions

01:05:36to cut back our funding.

01:05:38They really don't want

01:05:38to see this place closed.

01:05:40Nobody wants

01:05:40to see this place closed.

01:05:42While the observatory

01:05:43could find other

01:05:44collaborative parties

01:05:46which could provide funding,

01:05:48the problem with that is

01:05:49the NSF provides

01:05:51open sky science,

01:05:52which means anyone

01:05:53can come in

01:05:53and apply for time,

01:05:55whether they have

01:05:55the money or not.

01:05:56That is a really important

01:05:58thing to keep going.

01:06:00We're just going to try

01:06:01and do what we can

01:06:02to help keep that secured.

01:06:06The Green Bank

01:06:07Observatory has had

01:06:08more impact

01:06:09than I can say

01:06:11on my future

01:06:13and my ideas

01:06:13of what I'd like to do.

01:06:15Aspects of astronomy

01:06:17that I was not familiar with.

01:06:19For example,

01:06:19I've gotten so interested

01:06:20in the instrumentation side.

01:06:22I just think

01:06:23it's really important

01:06:24to have that background

01:06:25in knowing your equipment

01:06:27and knowing

01:06:27what you're researching

01:06:28so that you can do things

01:06:30like compare, you know,

01:06:31is this an actual signal

01:06:32or is this some sort

01:06:34of system issue,

01:06:35which I think

01:06:36is really important

01:06:37in SETI

01:06:38as well as in every field

01:06:40of research

01:06:41in radio astronomy.

01:06:43When I first met

01:06:44Ellie White,

01:06:45her and her mother

01:06:46came into my office.

01:06:48She was about 11 years old.

01:06:51And the funding problems

01:06:54for Green Bank

01:06:55Observatory

01:06:55had sort of

01:06:56just been released.

01:06:58And Ellie had been

01:06:58in her own time

01:07:00creating these

01:07:01cloth dolls

01:07:03of scientists.

01:07:05So she picked

01:07:06her favorite

01:07:06scientific people

01:07:07from history.

01:07:09And she had

01:07:09a Madame Curie doll

01:07:11and she, you know,

01:07:11she had these others.

01:07:13And the purpose

01:07:14of her visit

01:07:15was to see

01:07:17if we might want

01:07:18to sell those

01:07:19in our gift shop.

01:07:20Which I thought,

01:07:21well, that's kind of cool.

01:07:22you know, maybe we could

01:07:23do something with her.

01:07:25But what she said next

01:07:26is what I'll never forget.

01:07:28It'll be one of those moments

01:07:30that will live with me

01:07:32well after I'm retired.

01:07:35The reason that she wanted

01:07:36to sell them

01:07:37in our gift shop

01:07:37is because she wanted

01:07:38to give part of the proceeds

01:07:40back to the observatory

01:07:42to help fund our mission.

01:07:47So these are

01:07:48two of the scientist dolls.

01:07:50This is Nicholas Copernicus

01:07:51and Albert Einstein.

01:07:54I started showing them

01:07:55to people and they said

01:07:56you should sell these.

01:07:58So I thought, well,

01:07:59I'll sell them

01:07:59and donate part of the profits

01:08:00to Green Bank.

01:08:02How appreciative

01:08:02have they been

01:08:03about these dolls?

01:08:05Very.

01:08:05They're very,

01:08:06very appreciative.

01:08:08And just it's great

01:08:11to hear some of the stories

01:08:12of people who come in

01:08:14and buy them.

01:08:15I think the first doll

01:08:16that was sold

01:08:17was to a lady

01:08:17from New Zealand.

01:08:18Will you keep doing this?

01:08:21Yeah, as long as I can

01:08:22keep up with the demand.

01:08:26Green Bank has had

01:08:28such a profound effect

01:08:29on her.

01:08:31Just the exposure

01:08:33to what we do here

01:08:35changed her completely.

01:08:37She became so passionate

01:08:39about astronomy,

01:08:41so passionate about

01:08:42protecting the Green Bank

01:08:44Observatory, you know,

01:08:45to make sure that

01:08:46other people get

01:08:48the same reaction,

01:08:49you know, get the same effect.

01:08:51This has been

01:08:52a life-changing experience

01:08:53for Ellie, for Josh,

01:08:55my son, for us.

01:08:56She's learned things

01:08:58about how to ask questions

01:08:59without fear,

01:09:01to have curiosity

01:09:03and enthusiasm

01:09:04about learning,

01:09:05which is really

01:09:05what we're all striving for,

01:09:07and it's what we look

01:09:08to the heavens for.

01:09:10Ellie's passion

01:09:11for science

01:09:12and for astronomy

01:09:13is amazing,

01:09:14and it's just

01:09:14really neat to watch.

01:09:16If we were,

01:09:18heaven forbid,

01:09:20to stop funding

01:09:21fundamental science,

01:09:22then I think we lose

01:09:23a lot of things.

01:09:23I think in the near term,

01:09:26we lose a little piece

01:09:27of humanity.

01:09:27I think we lose

01:09:28a little piece

01:09:29of our ability

01:09:29to just go ask

01:09:30the question why

01:09:31and try to understand

01:09:31who and how

01:09:33we got here.

01:09:34And then in the long term,

01:09:35if you don't have people

01:09:36doing the basic

01:09:37fundamental research,

01:09:39you're not going

01:09:40to have big breakthroughs

01:09:4210, 20 years from now

01:09:43in understanding everything.

01:09:45And to me,

01:09:46that's the most important

01:09:47part of all this.

01:09:49It's time to commit

01:09:51to finding the answer

01:09:52to search for life

01:09:54beyond Earth.

01:09:58The breakthrough initiatives

01:09:59are making that commitment.

01:10:03Breakthrough Listen

01:10:03takes the search

01:10:05for intelligent life

01:10:06in the universe

01:10:07to a completely new level.

01:10:09In 2015,

01:10:13Russian billionaire

01:10:14Yuri Milner,

01:10:15along with Stephen Hawking,

01:10:16Frank Drake,

01:10:17and others,

01:10:18developed a long-term

01:10:19initiative dedicated

01:10:20to the search

01:10:21for intelligent civilizations

01:10:23beyond Earth.

01:10:24The highly funded

01:10:26SETI project,

01:10:27known as Breakthrough Listen,

01:10:29required the world's

01:10:30most powerful radio telescopes,

01:10:32including the world's

01:10:33largest, fully steerable scope,

01:10:35at the Green Bank Observatory.

01:10:37Much like Ohio State's

01:10:39Big Ear Telescope

01:10:40many years earlier,

01:10:42Green Bank's path

01:10:43led to the search

01:10:44for extraterrestrial intelligence,

01:10:46and the opportunity came

01:10:48at the perfect time.

01:10:50It's interesting

01:10:51how the timing

01:10:53of these things works out.

01:10:55The GBT

01:10:56and the Green Bank site

01:10:57were in need

01:10:58of finding external sources

01:11:00of funding.

01:11:01The Breakthrough Listen program

01:11:03is a privately funded project

01:11:05over 10 years

01:11:07with $100 million

01:11:09being spent on it.

01:11:11It is the next huge

01:11:13modern search

01:11:14dedicated to

01:11:16extraterrestrial

01:11:17intelligence detection.

01:11:19They needed to utilize

01:11:20the best technology

01:11:23that they could find.

01:11:25And the GBT,

01:11:26the Green Bank Telescope,

01:11:27is a radio telescope

01:11:28that can give them

01:11:30more sensitivity,

01:11:32more sky coverage,

01:11:33than any other radio telescope

01:11:35in the world.

01:11:37The search for extraterrestrial intelligence

01:11:39has been going on

01:11:40for more than 50 years now.

01:11:42With the advent

01:11:43of Breakthrough Listen,

01:11:4420% of the Green Bank

01:11:45Telescope's time

01:11:46per year

01:11:47is dedicated to

01:11:49the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

01:11:51And that is

01:11:52hundreds of hours,

01:11:54much, much more time

01:11:55and resources

01:11:56put towards SETI.

01:11:57So I think

01:11:58that really

01:11:59ups your chances.

01:12:01Would we like to actually

01:12:02see a signal in there?

01:12:04Of course.

01:12:04It would be amazing.

01:12:06It would change

01:12:07the way we would look

01:12:07at the universe

01:12:08because it's one thing

01:12:09to say there might be

01:12:10a signal out there.

01:12:12It's another thing to say

01:12:13we have found

01:12:14a signal out there.

01:12:16Green Bank is searching

01:12:17for its own

01:12:19WOW signal.

01:12:20We are looking for

01:12:22the signal

01:12:23that's going to

01:12:23knock our socks off.

01:12:25And we can't wait

01:12:26until we find it.

01:12:28Why would we ever

01:12:30want to give up

01:12:31the capability

01:12:32to expand our horizon

01:12:34and go back

01:12:36to a level

01:12:37where even the most

01:12:40basic question

01:12:41about our universe

01:12:43has to go unanswered

01:12:45because we didn't

01:12:46put a dollar into it.

01:12:49If the GBT

01:12:50or the Green Bank Observatory

01:12:52were to disappear,

01:12:54it's gone.

01:12:56These are national

01:12:57treasures located

01:12:59all around this country

01:13:00and some located

01:13:01around the globe

01:13:02that we just

01:13:04don't want to give up.

01:13:06The amount of money

01:13:07that it takes

01:13:08to run them

01:13:09is minuscule

01:13:10compared to the potential

01:13:12for expanding

01:13:15our knowledge

01:13:16that exists

01:13:17because they are here.

01:13:18that's a good view.

01:13:28That's a good view.

01:13:42So what are we looking at in here?

01:13:52We're coming to the Big Ear Room.

01:13:55This is a room that we created in honor of the Big Ear.

01:14:00And we made copies of the WOW signal,

01:14:04the data that we call the WOW signal.

01:14:07And we had built a beautiful scale model of the telescope,

01:14:16the Big Ear telescope.

01:14:18Imagine taking this element right here, the collector,

01:14:25and moving this enormous metal structure up and down

01:14:30so that you can collect information from different parts

01:14:33of the sky than, say, straight up.

01:14:36Can you take us out to the Big Ear?

01:14:40Sure.

01:14:40Let's go.

01:14:50That just happened, of course.

01:14:52And we'll get that out of there eventually.

01:14:55Eventually.

01:14:58I come back here practically every day.

01:15:06Big Ear is just over the crest of this hill.

01:15:10Oh, I hate to walk on a golf course in my street shoes,

01:15:16but what are you going to do?

01:15:20Ladies and gents, Big Ear.

01:15:25After losing federal funding in the 1970s, the Big Ear telescope shifted to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

01:15:46Besides discovering the historic WOW signal, the Ohio State SETI program was recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records for running the longest full-scale SETI program for its time.

01:16:00In 1997, despite its contributions to radio astronomy, developers decided the land under the Big Ear would be better served as a housing development and golf course.

01:16:13We got word that the land had been sold out from under us without even informing Dr. John Krause or anybody.

01:16:23They simply sold the land to land developers, and their goal was to increase the size of the golf course from a nine-hole course to an 18-hole course,

01:16:34and then to build some 400 homes on the land.

01:16:39Just a few months before John Krause died at age 94, he decided he needed to write a little note expressing this as a day of infamy,

01:16:51the day that he received notification that the Big Ear was going to be torn down.

01:16:57That caused a great hue and cry, and Ohio State University said,

01:17:02we are not going to spend money with lawsuits fighting over developers, so they threw in the towel.

01:17:07Had they had a well-financed research program going, I think they might have survived.

01:17:30Unfortunately, a lot of these major scientific instruments get superseded.

01:17:39They become obsolete.

01:17:41Interest of science, scientists, and science funding agencies moves on.

01:17:49The Big Ear had its day.

01:17:52It did important research in astronomy.

01:17:56It did that SETI research for all of those years.

01:17:59But there comes a time when old technology simply has outlived its usefulness,

01:18:09and with sadness, you tear it down.

01:18:14It was a sad moment to see it go, but the simple fact was that it had outlived its usefulness.

01:18:24It had its time in the sun, and the land was useful for other purposes.

01:18:32Do you think a golf course and housing development, do you think that was useful?

01:18:37Well, the fact is that before the Big Ear came along, the land was basically just wasteland.

01:18:44It was covered with trees and brush.

01:18:46And, of course, the Big Ear really wasn't good for much anymore.

01:18:52The simple fact was it was frozen in place.

01:18:58You could no longer remove the main primary light-gathering device up and down like this,

01:19:04so it was frozen in place like this.

01:19:07So what they essentially had to do was to wait for the sky to rotate above them

01:19:12if they wanted to collect information on a given star or from a given star to do SETI research.

01:19:19Do people miss it?

01:19:21I would say there was a giant uproar when the land was sold.

01:19:26But by the time the Big Ear was finally torn down, people weren't so upset about it.

01:19:37Is the Ohio State Observatory an icon?

01:19:41A temple of science that shouldn't have been demolished?

01:19:47It accomplished a lot, but I don't think it was an icon.

01:19:53Unfortunately, if it turns out the WOW signal's a real thing,

01:19:57that sometime somewhere down the road somebody demonstrates that it's an interstellar broadcast,

01:20:04it'll be tragic that the Ohio State Radio Telescope was torn down.

01:20:12If the WOW signal had been verified, if it had been found again,

01:20:18then, you know, it would be in every history book in the world.

01:20:22That would be one of the most important discoveries of all time.

01:20:25And because of the fact that it has this wonderful name,

01:20:28Jerry Amen was really brilliant to write WOW next to it.

01:20:31If he just, you know, made a check mark,

01:20:33probably nobody would have ever heard of the WOW signal.

01:20:35At least the public probably wouldn't have heard of it.

01:20:37So, you know, that's the difference between a confirmed result

01:20:41and an ambiguous one, unfortunately.

01:20:49Why do we search?

01:20:52The road is long, with few rewards.

01:20:56The skepticism demanded by good science tempers our excitement.

01:21:00And discovery remains elusive.

01:21:03And yet, we persevere.

01:21:06Fascinated by the possibility of what could be.

01:21:11Why care about life elsewhere?

01:21:15That's a good question.

01:21:17Life here is a riot of different forms, colors, sizes, noises, environments, behaviors.

01:21:28And I think that people probably have an innate interest

01:21:34in whether something like that happened elsewhere.

01:21:37And the only way to settle that question, of course, is to go look.

01:21:43I do think there is extraterrestrial intelligent life.

01:21:49And more than one instant in our galaxy and certainly in our universe.

01:21:57The universe is so vast and the earth and the sun are not unique in any way that we know of.

01:22:06There are literally millions and billions of other planets like the earth.

01:22:11It just seems scientifically improbable that life would have emerged only here.

01:22:17But on the other hand, someone has to be the first.

01:22:20So maybe we are the first.

01:22:23If so, it gives us a greater responsibility to say, all right, we're the first.

01:22:28We better not destroy ourselves.

01:22:30We better populate the universe and make things better for everyone.

01:22:36And not blow ourselves up in some stupid way.

01:22:39We desperately want meaning of some sort.

01:22:44We'd like to know why we're here.

01:22:47Are we here just by random accident or were we here on purpose?

01:22:51We are trying to find context to our humanity.

01:22:55It's really hard to predict what the consequences of finding a signal proving that we're not alone.

01:23:01What consequences that would have.

01:23:03This would be a sort of an inflection point, a change in human civilization.

01:23:07Because we would know that somebody is out there.

01:23:10If we could ever understand any part of the signal, that might change us much more.

01:23:14Because you would suddenly be privy to knowledge that's most likely far more advanced than our own.

01:23:19So, you know, that could change everything.

01:23:23Think of the impact of it.

01:23:26The entire world would be transformed when each and every person on this planet realized that we are not alone.

01:23:42We live sometimes in a difficult, ugly, violent world.

01:23:51And you're looking for some solace from that.

01:23:57And the one thing that this search for extraterrestrial intelligence gives you is that kind of hope.

01:24:09We want this.

01:24:12We want that sense even more.

01:24:15That we are capable of escaping the tyranny of the gravity that holds us.

01:24:23That we can soar outward into the universe.

01:24:29And where do we find that in the hope, the faint hope, that other civilizations have survived their crises.

01:24:40Been around for long enough to be able to soar themselves.

01:24:46We're lonely.

01:24:51We want that sense that we are not alone.

01:25:00We want it so badly.

01:25:06You know, we it's always Tim.

01:25:23People aren't losing their lives.

01:25:25We want so sat and going.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended