The Wow! signal
72 seconds from space that never came back
On 15 August 1977 the Big Ear radio telescope picked up a strong narrowband signal from Sagittarius lasting 72 seconds. Astronomer Jerry Ehman circled the readout and wrote 'Wow!' in the margin. Decades of searching have never found it again.
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Did you know
The most famous 'alien' signal is named after a margin note. In 1977 astronomer Jerry Ehman circled the sequence '6EQUJ5' on a printout and wrote 'Wow!' beside it. Where those 72 seconds came from is still unknown. Share →
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 3 years later
- 1981 AIDS first described — 4 years later
Europe
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — 24 years earlier
- 1968 May 1968 in France — 9 years earlier
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 12 years later
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 12 years later
- 1990 German reunification — 13 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 20 years earlier
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 16 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 8 years later
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 12 years later
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 14 years later
Middle East
- 1978 Camp David Accords — 1 year later
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 2 years later
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 3 years later
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 13 years later
- 1993 Oslo Accords — 16 years later
Africa
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 14 years earlier
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 10 years earlier
- 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War and Biafra — 10 years earlier
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — 3 years earlier
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 6 years later
Asia
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 24 years earlier
- 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — 11 years earlier
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 2 years earlier
- 1976 Tangshan earthquake — 1 year earlier
- 1978 Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening-up — 1 year later
Oceania
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 23 years earlier
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 18 years earlier
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 15 years later
Alive at the time
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 88)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 59)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 47)
- Golda Meir (aged 79)
- Jorge Luis Borges (aged 78)
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) (aged 76)
- Leonid Brezhnev (aged 71)
- Mother Teresa (aged 67)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 66)
- Richard Nixon (aged 64)