So Supernatural - ALIEN: The Wow! Signal

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

In 1977, Ohio State University's Big Ear radio telescope detected an unusually strong signal from outer space. It lasted 72 seconds. And because it was sent on a specific frequency, scientists wondered if the signal was deliberately transmitted from an intelligent source. Since then, the Wow! Signal has not been repeated—but scientists have discovered others like it… For a full list of sources, please visit: sosupernaturalpodcast.com/alien-the-wow-signal So Supernatural is an Audiochuck and Crime House production. Find us on social!Instagram: @sosupernatualpodTwitter: @_sosupernaturalFacebook: /sosupernaturalpod Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On July 1st, 2025, a NASA-funded telescope in Rio Orato, Chile, noticed something entering our inner solar system. At first, it appeared to be a comet, about seven miles wide and zooming toward our solar system at a speed of 130,000 miles per hour. Which would make it the fastest intercellar comet ever recorded in our solar system. They even gave it a name, 3-Eye Atlas. While scientists say it doesn't seem to pose any threat to Earth, it's definitely inching closer and is reported to fly by around mid-December. But there are some astronomers who say the flight path of this object feels almost too deliberate. And the close approach it's making to Venus, Mars, and Jupiter seem more like a galactic sightseeing tour,

rather than a random hunk of space rock floating without purpose. Basically, they think it might be more intelligent than we suspect, and therefore not a comet at all. What's even more interesting is that astronomers think it may have come from a distant cluster of stars right at the center of the Milky Way galaxy called the Sagittarius constellation. And if that's the case, this wouldn't be the first sign possible intelligent life stemming from that area. Not at all. See, back in August of 1977,

a team of scientists working at the Big Ear Telescope out of Delaware, Ohio picked up on something incredible. A transmission, they believed, also stemmed from the Sagittarius constellation. But this transmission didn't look like any of the data they'd collected before. Instead, it appears appeared, again, to be deliberate, and had all of the markers of being sent by intelligent life. The scientist who found it was so stunned, he could only write down one simple word about it in the notes. Wow.

I'm Ashley Flowers. Welcome back to So Supernatural. When I saw what I had to cover this one of the other than this one myself. with everything that's going on in the news surrounding Three-Eye Atlas. Because while the story around Three-Eye Atlas is still unfolding, there's a lot we can glean from a space signal that came 48 years before it. It's called the Wow Signal. This inexplicable transmission from space gets its name from a scientist called Jerry Aeman.

In 1977, he's 37 years old, and he specializes in both electrical engineering and astronomy. This means he's really good at working with satellite dishes, telescopes, and other machinery you can use to study outer space. Now, Jerry lives in a town called Delaware, Ohio, which is the home of the Big Ear Radio Observatory. It's a giant facility owned and operated by Ohio State University, and it's been operating since 1963, so 14 years at that point. This observatory covers about three football fields, and most of that space is dedicated to a giant telescope. But it's set up so people don't actually look through it. Instead, the Big Ear Telescope picks up vibrations,

meaning it's listening. I mean, not literally because sound doesn't travel in a vacuum-like space, but Big Ear picks up on radio waves, which are technically light, not sound. Then it takes all of the data and converts it into numbers and readings for scientists to interpret. Researchers there are always picking up transmissions from space, including a bunch of naturally occurring radio signals that different celestial bodies give off. It can be really helpful to track those signals because scientists can pick up on things that are too far away to see through telescopes.

And it helps them get a sense of what's actually in deep space, black hole, stars, planets, and other kinds of objects that have yet to be discovered. But that's not what big-year scientists are trying to find. They are specifically looking for messages that could potentially come from aliens. In the 1970s, a lot of scientists believe that there is a chance extraterrestrials could be trying to get in touch with Earth. And to be clear, at that time, their work isn't necessarily mainstream. Lots of people then don't think aliens exist, and there's no reason to bother looking for them. But there were also plenty of believers, enough of them to fund and support projects like Big Ear.

And Jerry Amin wants to be on the ground floor if and when we ever do make contact. Which means every day he comes into the Big Year offices and looks over the paperwork on all the signals that got picked up before his shift. Now, the science behind these signals is really complicated. So what I'm about to give you is a huge oversimplification, but here's the gist. All objects that emit energy also emit radio waves. So if you're scanning the sky for transmissions, you're also going to pick up a lot of background noise from comets, planets, stars, nebulae, and everything else that's in space. The best way to tell if a radio signal is coming from something. intelligent is to look at the frequency it's on. Because according to science reporters

Robin George Andrews and Lee Billings, most celestial bodies are just like spewing signals every which way in lots of frequencies and in every direction. There's no intelligent strategy to it. But every now and then, you'll catch a signal that's only broadcasting on one frequency, or a small range of them. And that is what scientists that big ear are looking for. Because that is a possible sign of intentionality. I mean, think of your favorite radio station. You know you can always pick it up by tuning your dial to a particular frequency. And it only blasts on that frequency because if it used all of the other ones, it would interfere with other channels. In fact, during solar flares, you might have a hard time

picking up your favorite radio station. That's because the radio signals from the sun have degraded the airwaves. And these space signals work essentially the same way. If something is playing across many of the frequencies, it's probably a natural phenomenon. But if it is limited to a very narrow band, it's more likely something intelligent chose to broadcast it on that channel. So at some point on August 15, 1977, the Big Year facility is tuned to pick up messages at 1420 megahertz. This is the frequency where neutral hydrogen vibrates, and hydrogen is incredibly abundant throughout the universe.

So some scientists believe that this might be the frequency in alien species would use to send interplanetary signals. Now, in fairness, there isn't much hard evidence to back this theory up, but you've got to pick a frequency, and 1420 megahertz is a good bet. So, sure, let's listen to the hydrogen channel. The point is, Big Gear is always picking up low-level signals from all of the hydrogen in the universe. Or at least all of the hydrogen that's close enough for their equipment to hear when they point the figurative mic at it. But each time there's a data pop.

Something more intense than the usual buzz, they know they're hearing something special. And that's exactly what happens on August 15th, 19th. For 72 seconds, there is an enormous spike in the transmission. It's actually 30 times more intense than the usual background hum. And I want to be clear, there's no clear message here. Whatever is broadcasting, it's not sending words or symbols or equations. It's just this burst of detectable energy. And given its volume, Big Ear registers it as notable.

The problem is, the facility is empty when this signal comes through. Big Ear doesn't have enough money to pay people to monitor their stations around the clock. In fact, they had to do a round of layoffs five years earlier in 1972. And now a lot of their former employees are working as volunteers due to the lack of funds. And that's true for Jerry, who's, been doing this work for free ever since his job at Big Year was eliminated. He just loves it too much to give up. But of course, he's got to fit in his volunteer schedule around other commitments.

And since he's working as a professor, that includes doing his other research, teaching, grading homework, advising his students, and putting together lesson plans. Which means he doesn't see the evidence of the spike until a few days after the fact. Eventually, though, he walks him. the door and sees a printout with all of the last several days readings. And the moment he reads it, he is stunned. See, the computer is programmed to rate all incoming transmissions with a number or a letter to show how powerful each one is. Ordinary background noise that's faint and quiet gets scored as a one. A two means the signal is twice as strong as normal. More powerful transmissions might

even be a 7 or an 8. Now, the problem is that the system can't handle double-digit numbers, so anything stronger than a 9 gets a letter instead, meaning something that should have been registered as a 10 gets written down as A, 11 is B, 12C, so on. The highest score possible is a Z, which corresponds to a 35. The printout in front of Jerry that he's reading says 6EQUJ5. Almost all of the other transmissions from the rest of the night are ones and twos. There's the occasional six or seven scattered around.

But this 72-second burst is the only thing that gets into the letter range at all. And you can see that it is building in intensity and then quieting back down. All to say, this is a super high-energy blast, much more powerful than what you'd explore. from anything natural. And Jerry is baffled by what he sees. So much so that he grabs a red pen and writes one word in the margin of the page. Wow.

He also circles the 6EQUJ5 sequence so that if anyone else looks at the reading later, they'll immediately spot what he saw. And thanks to his note, the readings come to be known as the wow signal. Now, nobody knows exactly what this signal means, or if it means anything at all. But Jerry and his colleagues are pretty sure it isn't a natural phenomenon because of the specific frequency there on. Because there are only two possible sources of a 1420 megahertz radio transmission.

I mean, first, it could be the natural hum of the universe's hydrogen atoms. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in existence. So if it gets hit by a wave of solar energy or a passing comet, it might let out an intense burst. But even when you have comets or solar flares, hydrogen tends to put out signals in the lower range, like one to two, like all of the rest of the transmissions. Something else would have to be at play to get readings this big.

So the second option is that something intelligent built equipment to broadcast radio waves at 1420 megahertz, and they sent the wow signal as a message. And if this transmission is from an intelligent species, it wasn't us, because every other country on Earth has agreed not to use this particular frequency. It is reserved for listening stations like the one at Big Ear, or for scientists who are studying other interstellar phenomena. You can learn a lot about space by observing the way hydrogen puts out signals, but you need peace and quiet on the channel to gather accurate readings. So if the wow signal was sent by something intelligent,

and not by humans, that leaves one possibility. It may be our first contact with alien life. As exciting as the possibility of being contacted by alien sounds, Jerry Eamon and his colleagues don't want to jump to conclusions. They need to learn more about the wow signal before they're willing to say what it could be. So the night after Jerry's discovery, researchers want to point the satellite in the same direction to try and pick up another transmission. The problem is that during the original broad news,

the machinery didn't quite manage to pinpoint the exact direction that the signal came from, just like the general vicinity. Jerry and the others only know that it originated from a group of stars somewhere in the Sagittarius constellation, roughly the same neighborhood as our new friend, Three-Eye Atlas. Now, there's this region of space in Sagittarius called M-55 with 100,000 stars. It's also about 20,000 light years away from Earth, so it's not like we can just send a probe to check things out. As reporter Mark Anthony Biddle put it in an article,

this region of space is basically, quote, the cosmic times square. It's so dense with locations for possible life that it would be a natural first place to start looking. So these scientists point their equipment in that direction, and they set it to pick up signals on the same 1420 and they find nothing. They try again the next night and the one after that.

And they don't hear anything like the wow signal. In the meantime, the big-year researchers are talking to other astronomers and researchers and professors. I mean, their work isn't confidential or secret, so there's no reason to keep the wow signal to themselves. Instead, Jerry and his colleagues are asking everyone they know if they've ever seen anything like this transmission. They want to make sure that they're not overlooking any explanations or missing any potential solutions. But the problem is that they only have limited data, and you can't tell a whole lot from 72 seconds of static. So all of their colleagues tell Jerry and the others, basically, if you pick up something like this again, let me know. Otherwise, I don't know how to help you.

And to be fair, a lot of these other scientists outside of Big Year are a bit hesitant to help with the research. In 1977, when most people heard the word aliens from outer space, they thought of B-movies or cheesy sci-fi novels. It was hard for researchers to be taken seriously if they admitted that they were studying mysterious transmissions from other planets. In fact, Jerry has two co-workers named John Krause and Robert Dixon. They've been working at Big Year since it was built in 1963. And they hate the fact that nobody takes their use.

years of experience seriously. So they decided to create their own magazine called Cosmic Search. It's all about Big Year and similar facilities, and the way that scientists use grounded, evidence-based processes to search for life on other planets. Along the way, they publish the data about the wow signal. And suddenly, this thing is public knowledge. And it turns out the general public is a lot more excitable than researchers.

Lots of people read the cosmic search article and think, okay, the wow signal is proof that aliens exist. Or at least some people come to that conclusion. As always, there are skeptics who try to debunk the evidence almost as soon as they hear it. For example, some say that maybe the message originated on Earth. I mean, yes, international treaties make it illegal for anyone to broadcast at 1420 megahertz.

But somebody could be operating an unlicensed radio station. And if so, the facility could have picked up their signals. But the big-year researchers say that is very unlikely. Their detection equipment is pointed into space, not back at Earth. Not to mention, if it was an Earth-based broadcast, it probably would have been detectable for more than 72 seconds. It's not like a pirate radio station would turn off after about a minute. or like it would have moved out of range during that time

because it's right on the same planet as Big Year. Basically, none of the evidence fits with the idea of this being something from our world. Now, another theory is that maybe a satellite was passing through space and it disturbed the hydrogen atoms around it, making them emit very intense radio waves. The issue here is that artificial satellites move really fast. If one passed in front of Big Year,

its hydrogen atoms would have only been in range for a fraction of one single second. There's no way it could have released a detectable signal for over a minute. Plus, no one has ever received a message like this before. And if the wow signal really was created by a satellite, well, then we would have seen lots of comparable broadcasts over the years, and we haven't. So the big ear researchers say they don't think it's a satellite, either. Other skeptics say that this must have just been a hoax. Maybe scientists at Big Ear faked the readings for attention, except there's no actual evidence that anyone tampered with the

equipment or manipulated the readings. Not to mention that Jerry John and Robert aren't going to throw away their life's work by forging evidence. And Big Ear is a secure facility, so nobody else could have accessed the equipment. All of that to say, the more we study the wow signal, the clearer it becomes that this transmission cannot be explained away. I mean, nobody can prove it's from aliens, but researchers are running out of alternative theories. 40 years end up going by,

and by the summer of 2017, there is still no clear consensus on where this signal came from. But that year, a Florida-based astronomy professor named Antonio Paris proposes a new theory. His idea is that on the night of August 15, 1977, there were two comets racing through the sky between Earth and the Sagittarius constellation. One of those comets had a huge cloud of hydrogen around it. Now, that particular comet had a name, 266P, Christensen. And that's a mouthful, so I'm going to call it Christensen for simplicity. Now, Paris says that because Christensen is in motion and the hydrogen clump is moving with it,

the atoms are emitting a lot of signals. Enough, in fact, he says, to create the wow signal. Big Gear only detected it for 72 seconds because that's how long Christensen and its hydrogen were in range. Afterwards, it vanished into space and we never picked up its signal again. At least, not for 40 years. But in 2017, Christensen's orbit takes it back near Earth again, and Paris has a chance to monitor it and see if it's blasting more transmissions like the wow signal.

Now, he doesn't have access to the big-year equipment because the facility shut down in 1997. So instead, he uses his personal gear, which isn't as big or as powerful. Still, he says he detects a signal coming off the comet. It's not as strong as the wow signal, but otherwise it's a pretty close match. Same frequency, same blast of meaningless signal with no embedded message, and so on. As for the discrepancies, he says there's two reasons why this signal is weaker than the first wow signal.

I mean, number one, his technology is less sensitive. But he says that if he was able to scan it using tech at Big Year, he'd get similar reasons. readings. But second, in the 40 years since the wow signal was first detected, Christensen has shrunk. And this is pretty standard because comets are made out of a blend of rock and ice, so each time they pass near stars, the heat makes some of the ice evaporate. So of course, Christensen is smaller than before. It's lighter. It doesn't have as many hydrogen atoms trailing after it. And naturally, the atoms won't have as strong of a vibration. Checks out, right?

Except for a couple of things. The biggest is that Paris made a mistake in his calculations. The Big Ear Telescope wasn't pointed at the Christensen comet on the night of August 15, 1977. And astronomers say that hydrogen clouds around comets likely aren't strong enough to emit radio waves like the wow signal. So, the search for a credible explanation contained. All the way to 2024, when a team of three astronomers from Puerto Rico, Colombia, and the U.S. release a paper with a new theory. Once again, it is very complicated, very scientific, but I'm going to try to cover it in a simple way. The idea is that maybe back in August of 1977 there was a big cloud of hydrogen just drifting through space.

Unlike with Paris's theory, these aren't caught up in a comet's orbit. just like floating on their own, which is very normal. There's a ton of hydrogen just drifting through space. But they say perhaps at the precise moment when the Big Air facility pointed at the cloud, a nearby star released a big flare. Now, if that blast hit the cloud exactly the right second, the hydrogen might have emitted a beam of microwave radiation.

And Big Year picked it up as an exceptionally strong, signal. After 72 seconds, the flare fades, the hydrogen goes back to its usual activity, and the wow signal disappears. And you might be thinking, okay, it sounds like this theory requires a lot of highly specific events to happen in a very particular way, and that makes it a bit hard to accept. But you don't know the half of it. See, nobody has ever observed this specific chain of events before. So, Yeah, sure, it is possible for a star to release a flare. And the flare could hit a cloud of hydrogen atoms and make them emit radiation.

But no scientist has ever seen that happen. I'll also note that as of this recording, this paper is still under review at a scholarly journal. The study's authors publicly released their findings to the press in the summer of 2024, but initial comments from the scientific community are skeptical. So in fairness, it is still possible that the wow signal could have come from a hydrogen cloud. It's just that we don't have any firm proof to back that theory up. If we want proof, we need more data. And the good news is that even though nobody has ever picked up another wow signal since the original broadcast,

some researchers have detected other signals. And they're similar in small but important ways. And these transmissions might tell us more about what or who is trying to get in touch. There is a lot we don't understand about signals from outer space. And interestingly, the wow signal isn't the only one of its kind. For example, in February of 2003, researchers in Puerto Rico were monitoring the sky, just like the big year scientists were in 19. But there's something very different and very cool about this 2003 study.

They're not searching at random. They already know there is an area that's been emitting radio signals. They haven't identified what the transmissions are, or if they're from something natural or intelligent. They're just hoping to pick up more of them and see if they can narrow down where they came from. And sure enough, this team finds one of the signals again and a lot. again. They detect it three separate times, always vibrating at 1420 megahertz. The same frequency as the wow signal.

Each broadcast is really short, just a few seconds apiece. And every time they hear it, the vibrations are stronger. So of course, the researchers are super excited about their discovery. They publicly announced that they found something that could be. be an alien broadcast. And they give the signal a name. S-H-G-B-0-2 plus-14A. So far as designations go,

not quite as catchy as wow signal. But ultimately, there isn't enough evidence to say that these signals came from extraterrestrial intelligence. Scientists still say it probably had natural causes. But let's jump ahead to April and May of 2019. That's when another group of scientists operating out of Australia and the United States pick up a different transmission. Unlike earlier signals, this isn't from some far-off distant planet.

It's basically in our backyard. It seems to be coming from Proxima Centuri, which is the closest star to our solar system, not counting the sun, of course. This radio wave seems pretty similar to the wow signal in a couple of ways. First, it's coming across at a very specific frequency. Not 1420 megahertz. This one is clocking in at 980 megahertz. But it's still more focused and directed

than you'd expect for ordinary background radio signals. It also comes across in a loud burst only to fade away and never be detected again. There are a few big differences, though. While the wow signal only lasted for, 72 seconds. The scientists pick up this one for a full five hours. And this new signal seems to be moving at exactly the speed you would expect if it was coming from a planet that is rotating around its star. Now this is really exciting because scientists have identified two planets

in orbit of Proxima Centauri. Their names, simply enough, are Proxima Century B and Proxima Centauri D. And Proxima B might be capable of supporting life. Although, you mean humans couldn't live there without spacesuits. Still, all of the factors are right. There could be some kind of civilization there, so maybe the researchers found one of the aliens broadcasts. They dubbed the transmission BLC1.

Now, researchers are really excited about BLC1, but they don't make any announcements about what they're. they've found, not right away because they don't want to raise false hopes. Instead, they want to double check all of their data and make sure they're not jumping to conclusions. It takes a year until 2021 for them to go public with their findings. And then when they do, they say that they don't think BLC1 came from aliens. Instead, they believe a broadcast from Earth interfered with their systems. It's kind of like when you're driving and your radio is picking up two stations at one, so it kind of keeps, like, cutting in between. So the scientists were picking up

Earth transmissions and other signals when the telescope is pointed at Proxima Centauri, and the combination made BLC1 look like an intelligent signal from space. But there's another group of California-based researchers who aren't discouraged by all of these recent failures. Instead, they're trying to recreate the conditions under which the wow signal was first detected. They set up satellites and receiver equipment, all with the same configuration that was used in 1977. Then they point it toward the Sagittarius constellation. For nearly 100 hours, they record everything they can possibly detect. And for about 99 of those hours, they don't find anything interesting or notable.

But there's one very brief burst that lasts for 10 seconds. It's not quite as loud or as powerful as the wow signal. But it's still more notable than the background noise. Unfortunately, the scientists aren't able to figure out where it came from, and they don't detect it again. Meaning, it's just as mysterious as the wow signal. And to this day, we still don't know if this new transmission was natural, alien or a hoax?

And you might be wondering, okay, so let's say aliens are trying to get in touch with us. Maybe they're broadcasting bursts of static at 1420 megahertz to try and get our attention. If that's the case, why are these signals so infrequent? I mean, you got the wow signal in 1977,

then a couple of possible follow-ups for decades later. That's a long gap. But as always, there are theories. one of them being that whoever is sending the signal might be on a planet that's very different from Earth, maybe one with a much longer day. It takes our planet 24 hours to make a complete rotation.

But other planets spin much faster or slower. I mean, one day on Venus lasts 243 Earth days, for example. It has the longest day of any planet in our solar system. But hypothetically, there could be a planet out there that takes, say, 40 or so years to spin around. So maybe someone on the far side of that alien world is still broadcasting the wow signal, and we're missing it because their equipment is pointed away from us. If we wait, eventually their facility will turn toward Earth again, and we might pick up another transmission.

Then again, maybe they can. have sent follow-up signals our way, but we missed them because we weren't listening to the right section of space at the right time. And maybe they aren't just sending signals. Maybe they're sending other resources too. Like, I don't know, a giant spaceship that we're confusing for a comet. Astronomers and astrophysicists around the world have been watching Three-Eye Atlas like a hawk ever since it was first spotted in Jolome. lie of 2025. And while the general consensus is this is some harmless, unintelligent space debris,

not everyone is on board with that theory. Like astronomer and theoretical physicist Avi Loeb. He's a professor at Harvard and has made a lot of important contributions to the study of astrophysics, including things like black holes. So, I mean, this guy means business. And he's often the voice for us UFO believers. in the scientific community. He and his team have been keeping a very close eye on three-eye atlas,

and he's the one who thinks that it's coming a little too close to the planets in our solar system for this to be coincidental. It's acting more like the Voyager space probe than a comet. Essentially, he says it looks like the object is sort of on autopilot, scoping out the area for, I mean, who knows what. Basically, the odds of some random comet coming this close to several planets in our solar system is below 0.005%. Three-Eye Atlas reached its closest point to Mars on October 3rd, 2025. Lowe projects that this object will disappear from any telescope's view for a few months around October as it passes the sun on the opposite side of the Earth.

But don't worry. We'll be swooping back around, reaching the interstellar object's closest point to our planet around December 19, 2025. Unfortunately, you won't be able to see it with the naked eye or any home telescope you might have. That's because it'll be about 700 times further than the moon, about 170 million miles away. Now, what will happen when it gets to that point? That's anyone's guess. Loeb hasn't said definitively whether he thinks the comet is intelligently controlled or not. But if it turns out it is, he says that it might be here to explore the planets in our solar system, maybe even our own.

He also hasn't ruled out the idea that the massive object might release smaller probes that could make contact with Earth. For now, though, the popular theory is that this might be able to be. still be some regular space debris, just one with uncharacteristic behavior. Images captured from another telescope in Chile show it might be growing a tail, which would put it more in line with a comet after all. And it's also starting to turn an emerald green, which could mean it's emitting rare chemicals as it heats up with its proximity to the sun. For now, I guess we'll just have to wait in see. see. Though I am sort of fascinated with Loeb's idea that this could be a nuclear-powered spacecraft,

maybe one that's been traveling through space for possibly millennia, and maybe it's finally reaching its destination. If that's the case, you have to wonder if the wow signal is somehow related. Did it come from this object? Or perhaps its planet of origin? Was the wow signal one of the first cries of a dying civilization? Could their extinction be the reason we never caught the signal again? Or only weaker versions of it later on?

And is 3-Ey Atlas the last remaining sign of that civilization? If we don't get the answers this time around, who knows what the future will bring? Because I don't know about you guys, but I'm ready for my mind to be blown with some planet-changing information. I'm ready for the next big wow. This is So Supernatural, an audio Chuck original produced by Crimehouse. You can connect with us on Instagram at So Supernatural Pod and visit our website, so supernaturalpodcast.com. Join Rasha and Yvette next Friday for an all-new episode.

I think Chuck would approve.