posted on Apr, 26 2010 @ 12:56 PM
The so-called "Wow!" signal has always fascinated me. According to the references linked to in Wikipedia (I caution against taking Wikipedia at face
value without reading the references personally,) a terrestrial reflection origin has been more or less ruled out. Furthermore, the signal was at a
frequency extremely near to that of the hydrogen line. While I agree that its lack of repetition renders it potentially dubious, we should probably
keep in mind the possibility of a signal sent specifically on a one-time basis (as others have stated, this has happened with our own SETI program
before). We have no reason to assume that any hypothetical entities sending the signal know we're here at all, and it's entirely possible that our
reception of it was entirely due to chance.
Then there's the issue of no further electromagnetic signals originating from the same direction. If they use technology capable of transmitting a
detectable electromagnetic signal, why haven't we detected any trace of their less specific electromagnetic radiation? I have to keep an open mind to
the possibility that the signal originated from some sort of traveling probe or other moving object that we might not detect additional signals from,
rather than from a planet itself.
And of course, it's always possible that an entirely natural phenomenon is responsible for the signal. We have no way of knowing.
The saddest and most frustrating part is that we'll never know in our lifetimes, as even if it originated from a planet orbiting one of the stars in
Chi Sagittarii, the nearest would take 220 years to detect any signal from us, and an additional 220 years to then redirect further signals at our
region of their "sky."