The Wow! Signal remains the strongest candidate for extraterrestrial contact in the history of SETI research, and nearly five decades later it is still unexplained. One anomalous 72-second transmission, one margin note, and science has been slightly unsettled ever since.
Thirty times stronger than background noise, lasting precisely 72 seconds, arriving from the direction of Sagittarius at the exact frequency scientists had long theorised an alien civilisation might use to say hello. And then: nothing. Not before, not since.
That is the story of 15 August 1977. And it is still, nearly fifty years on, unexplained.
The Most Famous Margin Note in Science
On 15 August 1977, volunteer Jerry Ehman was reviewing a printout from the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio State University when he spotted something extraordinary. The signal was narrowband, at the hydrogen frequency, and spectacularly anomalous. He circled it and wrote “Wow!” in the margin. That annotation became the signal’s name, and it has haunted SETI researchers ever since. Decades of follow-up observation have produced nothing. The signal has never repeated.
It might have been natural interference. It might have been something else entirely. We genuinely do not know, which is either thrilling or deeply unsettling depending on your disposition.
Meanwhile, Down in the Cloud Forest
The same date, 2013: the Smithsonian announced the formal identification of the olinguito, a small, round-faced carnivorous mammal native to the cloud forests of Ecuador and Colombia. The first new carnivore discovered in the Americas in 35 years, it had been quietly confused with its close relative, the olingo, for over a century. One had even lived in the Smithsonian’s own zoo in the 1960s without anyone realising what it actually was. A significant oversight for an institution whose broad job description involves knowing things.
A Door Forced Open
On 15 August 1995, Shannon Faulkner became the first female cadet to matriculate at The Citadel, the military college in South Carolina, following a two-year legal battle. She withdrew less than a week later, citing exhaustion and health issues. The headlines at the time were not generous. But the legal precedent held: the institution admitted women the following year. The door she forced open did not close behind her.
The Clocks of Pyongyang
And, because history rarely keeps to a theme: on 15 August 2015, North Korea created Pyongyang Standard Time, shifting its clocks 30 minutes behind the standard East Asian timezone to mark the 70th anniversary of liberation from Japanese colonial rule. The new timezone lasted three years before being quietly reversed in 2018.
A signal no one can explain, a mammal no one noticed, a barrier that finally gave way, and a country that briefly decided to exist in its own timezone. Today’s episode covers all four in ten minutes. It is, genuinely, a good use of your commute.