Talk:Wow! signal

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Transmitted power of the response

In the Response chapter, it is written "Arecibo scientists [...] beamed the transmission at roughly 20 times the power of the most powerful commercial radio transmitter".

However, the source states that it was the original signal that required 2.2 gigawatts, and at its peak was 30 times more powerful than ambient radiation from deep space. Also, the most powerful terrestrial radio transmitter has a power of about 2 GW, so I'm not sure what ‘20 times more’ refers to.

Arecibo message states that the response was transmitted with 450 kW, but I also couldn't find this in the sources there. Metropolismilk (talk) 21:38, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good point, I have removed that sentence. I think someone got confused about the 2.2 gigawatts line in the source. Smallangryplanet (talk) 09:54, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Updates on this?

I recently heard, via local news in the EU, that there was an update to this whole thing, but it's not stated here at all. What gives? Fourarmedoctopus (talk) 04:43, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have a link to the local news in question? It could be that whatever update has happened hasn't been seen by regular contributors to this page, or that it's not reliably sourced or something. Wikipedia is edited by volunteers and is not necessarily updated with the latest news about a particular topic, so sometimes what gives is just that nobody's gotten around to whatever info there is, yet. If you can share the new information though, that'd be a huge help! Smallangryplanet (talk) 09:49, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello there. Unfortunately I didn't have one, since I saw it on TV, but a quick lookup led me to https://sicnoticias.pt/ciencia/2025-08-29-o-polemico-sinal-wow-misterio-espacial-com-quase-50-anos-pode-ter-sido-decifrado-a726e9fc , which more or less matches the date I saw this on TV. "SIC" is a notable, and usually reliable, channel here in Portugal.

In this online article, they mention an article from Space.com (which I'm unaware of the reliability of), which you can all read in 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 . Whether it matters for this current article here in Wikipedia, or not, I'm uncertain...

Fourarmedoctopus (talk) 14:25, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The study that the Space.com article is about is in the Hypotheses on the signal's origin section of the article ("In August 2024..."). Schazjmd (talk) 14:33, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

more recent news.... this article suggests a spatial correlation between wow!_signal origin and 3I/ATLAS

https://avi-loeb.medium.com/was-the-wow-signal-emitted-from-3i-atlas-d18d4f0d1f1e Maxatraxar (talk) 13:13, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

At this point, Avi Loeb is throwing as many darts as he can to remain relevant. -- Kheider (talk) 13:27, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nearly all of the Response was never actually transmitted?

A gentlemen on youtube known as Lemmino posted a video discussing messages sent to other stars. In it, he claims that the Wow! Response supposedly sent in 2012 was never actually transmitted - save for some of the messages at the beginning - before the transmitter ceased functioning.

Apparently, the stress of transmitting thousands of messages over time had caused the transmitter to overheat and fail.

Here is the video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFI5WpK2sgg

Here is the time step where this is discussed: 1:53:10. or you can skip to the "Wow! Reply" chapter of the video.

I'm curious if we can get any confirmation on this since Lemmino's videos are usually very well researched, but I've seen no mention of it here on Wikipedia or in any search results. Thunderbolt210 (talk) 08:04, 1 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

YouTube is not a reliable source. WP:YOUTUBE. — Benison (Beni · talk) 14:10, 1 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Further to the above, if their videos are well-researched, there should be secondary sources that we can use. Primefac (talk) 20:58, 1 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I managed to find this source on Lemmino's citations page for the video above. As mentioned in the video, it appears to be his own original research as he contacted Robert Kerr who worked at Arecibo. lavsunrise (talk) 13:24, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Mention of Wow! Signal in WIRED magazine article

I'm not familiar enough with Wikipedia editing to confidently know whether to add this information myself, but WIRED magazine mentions the Wow! Signal in this article:

https://www.wired.com/story/the-first-radio-signal-from-comet-3i-atlas-ends-debate-about-its-nature/

Quote from article:

'“Five weeks ago, I encouraged radio observatories like MeerKAT to search for radio emission from 3I/ATLAS given that the arrival direction of 3I/ATLAS coincided to within 9 degrees with the arrival direction of the Wow! Signal detected in 1977 at a frequency of 1.4204556 gigahertz,” astrophysicist Avi Loeb wrote in a Medium post. “In response, I was assured that 3I/ATLAS will be monitored by radio observatories like MeerKAT.”'

It also goes on to mention:

"Loeb has been has been among the most vocal advocates of the hypothesis that 3I/Atlas has a technological origin. (And he has already invited Kim Kardashian to join his research team.)" Grayautumnday (talk) 18:33, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for sharing this, @Grayautumnday. I read through the article, and the only connection to Wow! was that "within 9 degrees" mention by Loeb, so the article doesn't provide any information pertinent to the topic of this article that would be worth including. Schazjmd (talk) 18:51, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Additionally, that Loeb thinks "within 9 degrees" (e.g., 18 moon diameters) is proximal to a point source, I question his reliability for any topic remotely related to astrophysics. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 19:27, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]