4 ms·

I had a theory that it was someone walking across the field with an electronic device, like a flashlight. So I looked up the duration of the signal, size of the

by 34679 1y ago

I had a theory that it was someone walking across the field with an electronic device, like a flashlight. So I looked up the duration of the signal, size of the field, and average walking pace. It matched perfectly.

andrecarini 1y ago
Would you mind expanding on your theory more?
- m3kw9 1y ago
  Trust me bro theory
- 34679 1y ago
  It was after watching a documentary called "WOW Signal". The receiver they built was along the edge of a field, and it's designed to pick up extremely weak variations in electrical signals/radio waves. They go into great detail about how sensitive it is. The signal itself looks like a parabola when graphed, gaining in intensity and then falling off at the same rate. Exactly what you'd expect from someone walking across the field in front of it. And if I remember correctly, the signal was more about how much it differed from what was expected, not necessarily how intense it was. My thinking is that if it can pick up on the variations in signal from a star system light-years away, it would also indicate on a Timex watch (or flashlight) a dozen meters away.
  - lelanthran 1y ago
    > The signal itself looks like a parabola when graphed, gaining in intensity and then falling off at the same rate. Exactly what you'd expect from someone walking across the field in front of it. Also exactly what you'd expect if aliens were beaming a search signal into their sky, no?
    - 34679 1y ago
      Yes, but one is far more likely.
      - pyman 1y ago
        Statistically speaking, everything points to human interference. My theory is that the government was planning to cut funding, and to stop that from happening someone deliberately created the interference. That's more likely than aliens going extinct after sending one single message.
      - lelanthran 1y ago
        > Yes, but one is far more likely. Well, yeah, but I wasn't addressing that. My point is that any signal from an intelligent species is going to look exactly like the signal from someone walking past with an emitter.
  - venusenvy47 1y ago
    I'd like to watch this documentary. Do you know the year and/or channel where you saw it? The antenna is focused with a tremendous amount of gain towards a spot in the sky, and provides a very significant amount of rejection to signals in all other directions. I can't see how you would get a signal at 1.42 GHz from a watch or flashlight. Harmonics from something like a walkie talkie only occur when the radio is transmitting, and they would spread in bandwidth at each successive harmonic. It would have to be an extremely narrow fundamental frequency, with no audio signal on it, to get a signal with less than 10 kHz at 1.42 GHz.
    - 34679 1y ago
      https://m.imdb.com/title/tt7928816/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt7928816/ I don't remember where I watched it, but the 2nd and 3rd links from a kagi search were for Prime and Apple TV.
kiliantics 1y ago
Duration of the signal, along with intensity variation, is consistent with the duration of any possible point source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal#Time_variation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal#Time_variation
floatrock 1y ago
There's a story of a famous observatory that, iirc, kept on seeing really powerful intermittent signals that they couldn't quite hone in on. It seemed everytime they tried to zoom in on the source they couldn't find it again. Signal was quite elusive. They finally traced it to people using the microwave in the break room in a very specific way. Some people liked to open the microwave door before the timer went off. The microwave stopped, of course, but there was a split second where it was still emitting while the protective cage was opened, and the energy that leaked out during those couple of ms were enough to screw with the observatory equipment. Aliens? Nope, just some tired grad student reheating their coffee.
- metalliqaz 1y ago
  even when my microwave is closed, the interference it generates while running blocks my bluetooth headphones
  - floatrock 1y ago
    Yep. Water molecules resonate at 2.4 GHz (so that's what microwaves emit), which is also the unlicensed radio spectrum that bluetooth and a lot of other consumer radio devices operate on. Not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg here. But the observatory had either a well-shielded microwave or break room was in an adjacent building or something (they did consider "ya know, microwaves make RF emissions, and we're running a sensitive RF measurement facility here"). It was just when the door was opened that the energy emissions exceeded the design specifications. Classic human factors always find a way around your design.
    - ianburrell 1y ago
      The microwave came first. The 2.4GHz ISM band was reserved because of microwave interference. It turned out to be perfect for short-range low-power radio because microwaves don't run all the time, and don't go far outside the house. Microwaves have gotten better shielding. My old one used to take out Wifi and Bluetooth standing next to it, but my current one doesn't cause problems.
jfengel 1y ago
It would have to be a very specific kind of device. The "Wow!" signal isn't broad-spectrum noise. It's one specific frequency, and it just happens to be a frequency near one we expect to be used as a signal. Somebody could well have been walking across a field with a 1450 MHz generator. I don't know why; maybe it was a prototype of a portable microwave-oven/Walkman mashup. If so, it was leaky, and perhaps that's why it never caught on.
- griffzhowl 1y ago
  > it just happens to be a frequency near one we expect to be used as a signal. What's the reasoning for this? I've seen noted that the Wow signal of 1420 MHz is near the hydrogen line frequency, and is commonly detected astrophysically. So is the reasoning just that, if you want to send a signal, then you might choose this frequency because other civilizations will probably have detectors tuned to it? But then the flip-side of that is that if you detect this frequency, then it's almost certainly natural origin, from the excitation of hydrogen.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - exe34 1y ago
    yes that other 'people' will be listening, no, because you can pulse it with the fibbonaci sequence or prime numbers, which are not easily produced by astrophysical processes.
    - griffzhowl 1y ago
      Of course if there's a pattern like that it would change things. This signal seems to have been a single pulse though
      - wolfgang42 1y ago
        We have no idea whether the signal had a pattern because the only recording we have of it consists of averages over 10-second samples, so any modulation <10s (or patterns larger than the 72s recording) would have been lost. It could have been an AM broadcast of a herd of circus elephants playing the William Tell Overture for all we know.
MisterTea 1y ago
I doubt a flashlight of that time, a DC device, is going to emit a strong narrow band radio signal in the GHz range.
anikom15 1y ago
What handheld electronic devices existed in 1977? A flashlight would have been incandescent.
- dghlsakjg 1y ago
  Handheld radios (walkie talkie) predate that by at least a decade. They probably were mostly operating around 30 mhz in the CB band or 120-150 in the Ham or aircraft bands in that era, but harmonics are a thing
  - pyman 1y ago
    Or the government was planning to cut funding, and to stop that from happening someone deliberately created the interference. Statistically speaking, that's more likely than aliens going extinct after sending one single message.
MathMonkeyMan 1y ago
I did some undergrad research on the [ADMX][1] experiment, which is searching for a theoretical particle by listening for its interaction with a microwave photon in a big, ultra-cold cylinder that can be tuned to different frequencies. A while back, they thought that they might have found something at 700 MHz. Then went looking again and it was gone. My professor said that it was probably a CPU in the lab. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axion_Dark_Matter_Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axion_Dark_Matter_Experiment

by 34679 1y ago

andrecarini 1y ago

Would you mind expanding on your theory more?

m3kw9 1y ago
Trust me bro theory
34679 1y ago
It was after watching a documentary called "WOW Signal". The receiver they built was along the edge of a field, and it's designed to pick up extremely weak variations in electrical signals/radio waves. They go into great detail about how sensitive it is. The signal itself looks like a parabola when graphed, gaining in intensity and then falling off at the same rate. Exactly what you'd expect from someone walking across the field in front of it. And if I remember correctly, the signal was more about how much it differed from what was expected, not necessarily how intense it was. My thinking is that if it can pick up on the variations in signal from a star system light-years away, it would also indicate on a Timex watch (or flashlight) a dozen meters away.
- lelanthran 1y ago
  > The signal itself looks like a parabola when graphed, gaining in intensity and then falling off at the same rate. Exactly what you'd expect from someone walking across the field in front of it. Also exactly what you'd expect if aliens were beaming a search signal into their sky, no?
  - 34679 1y ago
    Yes, but one is far more likely.
    - pyman 1y ago
      Statistically speaking, everything points to human interference. My theory is that the government was planning to cut funding, and to stop that from happening someone deliberately created the interference. That's more likely than aliens going extinct after sending one single message.
    - lelanthran 1y ago
      > Yes, but one is far more likely. Well, yeah, but I wasn't addressing that. My point is that any signal from an intelligent species is going to look exactly like the signal from someone walking past with an emitter.
- venusenvy47 1y ago
  I'd like to watch this documentary. Do you know the year and/or channel where you saw it? The antenna is focused with a tremendous amount of gain towards a spot in the sky, and provides a very significant amount of rejection to signals in all other directions. I can't see how you would get a signal at 1.42 GHz from a watch or flashlight. Harmonics from something like a walkie talkie only occur when the radio is transmitting, and they would spread in bandwidth at each successive harmonic. It would have to be an extremely narrow fundamental frequency, with no audio signal on it, to get a signal with less than 10 kHz at 1.42 GHz.
  - 34679 1y ago
    https://m.imdb.com/title/tt7928816/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt7928816/ I don't remember where I watched it, but the 2nd and 3rd links from a kagi search were for Prime and Apple TV.

kiliantics 1y ago

Duration of the signal, along with intensity variation, is consistent with the duration of any possible point source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal#Time_variation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal#Time_variation

floatrock 1y ago

There's a story of a famous observatory that, iirc, kept on seeing really powerful intermittent signals that they couldn't quite hone in on. It seemed everytime they tried to zoom in on the source they couldn't find it again. Signal was quite elusive. They finally traced it to people using the microwave in the break room in a very specific way. Some people liked to open the microwave door before the timer went off. The microwave stopped, of course, but there was a split second where it was still emitting while the protective cage was opened, and the energy that leaked out during those couple of ms were enough to screw with the observatory equipment. Aliens? Nope, just some tired grad student reheating their coffee.

metalliqaz 1y ago
even when my microwave is closed, the interference it generates while running blocks my bluetooth headphones
- floatrock 1y ago
  Yep. Water molecules resonate at 2.4 GHz (so that's what microwaves emit), which is also the unlicensed radio spectrum that bluetooth and a lot of other consumer radio devices operate on. Not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg here. But the observatory had either a well-shielded microwave or break room was in an adjacent building or something (they did consider "ya know, microwaves make RF emissions, and we're running a sensitive RF measurement facility here"). It was just when the door was opened that the energy emissions exceeded the design specifications. Classic human factors always find a way around your design.
  - ianburrell 1y ago
    The microwave came first. The 2.4GHz ISM band was reserved because of microwave interference. It turned out to be perfect for short-range low-power radio because microwaves don't run all the time, and don't go far outside the house. Microwaves have gotten better shielding. My old one used to take out Wifi and Bluetooth standing next to it, but my current one doesn't cause problems.

jfengel 1y ago

It would have to be a very specific kind of device. The "Wow!" signal isn't broad-spectrum noise. It's one specific frequency, and it just happens to be a frequency near one we expect to be used as a signal. Somebody could well have been walking across a field with a 1450 MHz generator. I don't know why; maybe it was a prototype of a portable microwave-oven/Walkman mashup. If so, it was leaky, and perhaps that's why it never caught on.

griffzhowl 1y ago
> it just happens to be a frequency near one we expect to be used as a signal. What's the reasoning for this? I've seen noted that the Wow signal of 1420 MHz is near the hydrogen line frequency, and is commonly detected astrophysically. So is the reasoning just that, if you want to send a signal, then you might choose this frequency because other civilizations will probably have detectors tuned to it? But then the flip-side of that is that if you detect this frequency, then it's almost certainly natural origin, from the excitation of hydrogen.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- exe34 1y ago
  yes that other 'people' will be listening, no, because you can pulse it with the fibbonaci sequence or prime numbers, which are not easily produced by astrophysical processes.
  - griffzhowl 1y ago
    Of course if there's a pattern like that it would change things. This signal seems to have been a single pulse though
    - wolfgang42 1y ago
      We have no idea whether the signal had a pattern because the only recording we have of it consists of averages over 10-second samples, so any modulation <10s (or patterns larger than the 72s recording) would have been lost. It could have been an AM broadcast of a herd of circus elephants playing the William Tell Overture for all we know.

MisterTea 1y ago

I doubt a flashlight of that time, a DC device, is going to emit a strong narrow band radio signal in the GHz range.

anikom15 1y ago

What handheld electronic devices existed in 1977? A flashlight would have been incandescent.

dghlsakjg 1y ago
Handheld radios (walkie talkie) predate that by at least a decade. They probably were mostly operating around 30 mhz in the CB band or 120-150 in the Ham or aircraft bands in that era, but harmonics are a thing
- pyman 1y ago
  Or the government was planning to cut funding, and to stop that from happening someone deliberately created the interference. Statistically speaking, that's more likely than aliens going extinct after sending one single message.

MathMonkeyMan 1y ago

I did some undergrad research on the [ADMX][1] experiment, which is searching for a theoretical particle by listening for its interaction with a microwave photon in a big, ultra-cold cylinder that can be tuned to different frequencies. A while back, they thought that they might have found something at 700 MHz. Then went looking again and it was gone. My professor said that it was probably a CPU in the lab. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axion_Dark_Matter_Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axion_Dark_Matter_Experiment