The WOW! Signal From Space Was Stronger than Scientists Originally Thought
Los Angeles, CA, September 2025 -- Editor’s Note: The article below first appeared on the website of the UK-publication The Independent, and can be seen here: https://www.independent.co.uk/space/wow-signal-alien-mystery-strong-b2814132.html
The mysterious “Wow!” signal from deep space, caused by a yet unknown astronomical event, was much stronger than previously thought, a new study suggests.
“Wow!” is the name given to the enigmatic and powerful radio waves recorded by astronomer Jerry R Ehman in August 1977, and has long been held to be the most promising “alien” signal ever detected from space.
It received the moniker as scientists who first recorded it were so astonished they wrote “Wow!” next to the signal on a printout, and the name has stuck ever since.
For long, both the source and meaning of the signals have been widely debated in the scientific community.
Now, a long list of researchers, including astronomers and volunteers, have provided corrections and fresh insights into the signal and its potential causes.
New analysis of the signal’s original data could explain why the enigmatic radio waves have been difficult to identify, they say.
“The Wow! Signal, detected in 1977 by the Ohio State University SETI project, remains one of the most intriguing unexplained radio transients,” researchers write in a yet-to-be peer-reviewed study.
The latest findings were made thanks to the efforts of volunteers who ran more than 75,000 pages of signal’s original data through an optical character recognition system, overseen by human validators.
This allowed an in-depth computer analysis of the original signal for the first time, researchers say.
Scientists could now narrow down the part of the sky the signal could have come from, along with improved certainty of its location by two-thirds.
The latest estimate of the signal’s strength also suggests it is significantly higher than previous calculations.
Researchers also corrected what was likely a mistake in the calculation of the signal’s frequency, indicating the source of the signal was likely spinning much more rapidly to create the kind of radio waves.
The findings completely rule out the possibility that the signal was human-made as there were no known TV stations or satellites at that time, which could have caused these types of waves.
An internal software error also didn’t contribute to the strange signal, scientists said.
This confirms the signal is astronomical but does not mean it is of extraterrestrial origin, they noted.
“Our analysis provides additional support for the hypothesis that the Wow! Signal most likely had an astrophysical origin rather than being attributed to radio interference,” researchers wrote.
“These findings provide the most precise constraints to date on the location, intensity, and frequency of the Wow! Signal and offer a new path to identify its origin,” they said, adding that the phenomenon “requires further investigation”.
Editor’s Note Two: And according to SPACE.com: https://www.space.com/space-exploration/search-for-life/that-mysterious-wow-signal-from-space-scientists-may-finally-know-where-it-came-from-and-its-probably-not-aliens
Researchers from the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo are proposing a less extraterrestrial explanation for The Wow! Signal. On-going assessments, led by Abel Méndez, are being pursued under the "Arecibo Wow!" Project, an initiative established to analyze unexplained radio signals from space in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
"We look at old archives with modern science methodologies. It's a bit like space archaeology," said Wow! Signal researcher Hector Socas Navarro, director of the European Solar Telescope Foundation and a staff scientist at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias.
NEW CLUES:
Researchers from that project have re-analyzed decades of previously unpublished observations and archival data from the Ohio State University SETI program. The result is the most precise characterization yet of the perplexing signal from afar and revealing new clues to its origin.
"Our newly derived properties may help finally pinpoint the source of the Wow! Signal," Méndez told Space.com. While the group's just-published paper focused on revising the known properties of the Wow! Signal, "we also discovered new properties that we look forward to sharing in an upcoming paper," he advised.
"We aim to archive and share all data from the Big Ear telescope by 2027, marking the 50th anniversary of the Wow! Signal," Méndez added.
NATURAL ASTROPHYSICAL ORIGIN?
In a recent posting on the Arecibo Wow! Project's website, Méndez underscored the team's output to date. The research findings spotlight the prospect that the Wow! Signal was created by a natural astrophysical origin, Méndez and colleagues report.
Also the work does make radio interference "an increasingly unlikely explanation," they add. "This study doesn't close the case," Méndez points out. "It reopens it, but now with a much sharper map in hand."
Méndez and fellow researchers hypothesize that the Wow! Signal was caused by a sudden brightening of the hydrogen line in interstellar clouds, triggered by a powerful transient radiation source such as a magnetar flare or soft gamma repeater (SGR).
"Our results don't solve the mystery of the Wow! Signal," Méndez states. "But they give us the clearest picture yet of what it was and where it came from. This new precision allows us to target future observations more effectively than ever before."
New speculation that the Wow! Signal was a sudden brightening of the hydrogen line in interstellar clouds, perhaps triggered by a powerful transient radiation source such as a magnetar flare or soft gamma repeater. Or was it?
(Image Above Credit: Méndez et al., 2024)
CITIZEN SCIENCE - JOIN THE SEARCH
The continuing research into the Wow! Signal has spurred the creation of the Wow@Home project. This initiative is a low-cost way that others can now actively search for similar signals and other rare cosmic events, including potential technosignatures of other star folk — in real time.
Wow@Home project officials found that the Wow! Signal was strong enough that even small telescopes could potentially detect similar signals.
Indeed, a network of small radio telescopes offers several distinct advantages compared to large professional observatories.
Low-cost systems can operate autonomously around the clock, making them ideal for continuous monitoring of transient events or long-duration signals.
WOW-LIKE SIGNAL STRENGTH
Wow@Home is a cost-effective, engaging, and accessible, ideal for education, citizen science, and expanding participation in radio astronomy.
"A complete setup costs around $500, including a dedicated computer, but we are not selling these systems. Instead, we will provide recommendations for the necessary parts and offer free software to power the telescope and connect it to the Wow@Home network to search for transient events," a Wow@Home posting explains.
The software is built on analysis methods the project's developing to detect Wow-like signals in the archive data of professional observatories, as part of their Arecibo Wow! undertaking.
For more information on Wow@Home, visit the project's website. The group's recent research report is available on arXiv.org and will be submitted to the Astrophysical Journal.
SUBMITTED BY:
Dan Harary
