Explained: The 'Wow' Signal

6EQUJ5. Alien beacon or mundane comet, or neither? Let me know down in the description what you think!

[rickybandit]

18, 000 years ago sent. Recieved 1977 left on read

[orangekayak]

6EQUJ5 is some martian's wifi password :)

[futurepig]

Somewhere in the Universe there is an advanced civilization whose scientists believe we look like a stick figure composed of stacked red cubes.

[AspectOfTheStorm]

I agree with everyone else. This channel is sick. Good, interesting content without an annoying host. Keep it up. I bet you'll be at half a million subs within a years time

[kiefac]

What if we get a signal stronger than that one? Do we call it the "Wower signal"?

[raspberryturnovers]

Something which a lot of people don't know is that the signal "exposure" was only 72/73 seconds long because the big ear in Ohio was a fixed structure. The exposure of 72/73 seconds was the maximum that could be collected before the earth's rotation caused the loss of the signal. One of the biggest questions I like to think about was, how long was the signal? Was it continuous? (two questions I know!)

[BeagleBagel]

As a Human, if nobody told me what those pixels meant (Apart from the little Human) I'd have no clue.

[Bingus]

What if the wow signal was sent by a now extinct alien race as a death scream 18, 000 years ago?

[Nabbehh]

Just found this channel and it's pretty damned good.

[longislandlegoboy]

*finally finds possibility of alien life, they'd all be dead by the time we contact them*

[timturner]

id just like to point out that it took at least 17000 years for that signal to reach earth. whatever sent it isnt there anymore. and humans probably wont be here by the time they receive our response

[TorTor]

I was really excited to see this topic, I just did a speech on this signal. Glad to see your take on it!

[MultiGingerface]

Just an update in 2017 Antonio Paris discovered that the sound was from two comets, 266P/Christensen and 335P/Gibbs, both comets are covered in hydrogen gas clouds, 1420MHz is the same radio frequency of hydrogen. The comets are thought to have been in the place where the Wow signal came from and 266P/Christensen matched the Wow signal.

[chrism]

The funny thing is, there may well be life out there somewhere, but if it's not in our galaxy, there will never be any interaction between us.
The universe is far too vast to travel and by the time any messages will have been sent and a response received, both civilizations will probably have died out do to resource consumption or natural disaster.

[Taipan]

I reckon the Wow! signal, 6EQUJ5, looks kind of similar to the Latin word 'Equus'. In biology Equus is a genus of mammals that includes horses, zebras, and donkeys. The Wow! signal was broadcast from the Sagittarius constellation, and Sagittarius in astrology is portrayed as a centaur, a half-man, half-horse creature from Greek myth. Therefore the aliens that sent the Wow! signal must be some sort of intelligent horse people. Yay or 🐎

[Artyom]

dude you're about to blow up. your content is great!

[hudsong]

Update after years, if anyone watch this and read the comments: the two comets theory has been dismissed. Among others, there were three main reasons it have been proved the comets had nothing to do with the signal:

1st - the comets don't emit those high frequency values as the Big Ear recorded (the values scale from lowest = 1 to higher = 9, and if it's bigger than 9, it goes from A to Z, and we know the Wow! signal reaches Q and U).

2nd - the Wow! was only captured in ONE beam of the Big Ear. For no reason a comet could EVER (like, 0% chances) get caught in one beam, and not in the other.

3rd - the comets weren't there at the time of the Wow! which was 22:16, August 15, 1977.

[Waphurus]

This video makes me feels so incredibly small, lonely and most off all sad since literally my dreams are humans contacting aliens but I know that I will never ever be able to even witness our first established colony outside of the milky way

[rigelbound]

a quick note: After this video was made, a possibly habitable planet has been discovered in the closest system to the solar system, at only 4.2 light years away.

[geekychannel]

What if it was a nuke? A powerful radio blast signaling the end of a civilization.