Ontem, há 35 anos...para nerds

So one of my hobbies is Astronomy.  I have SETI - Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence as my screensaver.   It is a research program out of UC Berkeley.   What it does is evaluate radio telescope data from outer space when my screensaver comes up.  Its actually pretty cool looking plus I feel like I helping a good cause.  Here's the website: 

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/

So yesterday was the 35th Anniversay of the Wow! Signal.  

Late one night in the summer of 1977, a large radio telescope outside Delaware, Ohio intercepted a radio signal that seemed for a brief time like it might change the course of human history. The telescope was searching the sky on behalf of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and the signal, though it lasted only seventy-two seconds, fit the profile of a message beamed from another world. Despite its potential import, several days went by before Jerry Ehman, a project scientist for SETI, noticed the data. He was flipping through the computer printouts generated by the telescope when he noticed a string of letters within a long sequence of low numbers---ones, twos, threes and fours. The low numbers represent background noise, the low hum of an ordinary signal. As the telescope swept across the sky, it momentarily landed on something quite extraordinary, causing the signal to surge and the computer to shift from numbers to letters and then keep climbing all the way up to "U," which represented a signal thirty times higher than the background noise level. Seeing the consecutive letters, the mark of something strange or even alien, Ehman circled them in red ink and wrote "Wow!" thus christening the most famous and tantalizing signal of SETI's short history:

                                                      The "Wow!" signal

8'|

Hey that is neat stuff. I wonder if there is app for that on iphones. I will join you in the nerds club lol.

That's really interesting - thanks for that LooneySyl. Interesting website too.

blue

thanks for the share 8'|

All I have to say is WoW  . Amusing. Wonder what'll happen if there is a reply to "our" (earthlings) reply.

I used to also participate in the SETI project.  Thanks for reminding me-I think I'll start again!