Wow! Signal (Aug 15 1977)
artifact
For 72 seconds in 1977 a telescope caught the best possible sign of alien contact, and it has never come back.
Who they are
The Wow! Signal, a radio burst recorded on August 15, 1977 by the Big Ear telescope at Ohio State.
What they do
It is the strongest candidate signal from possible alien technology in SETI's 60-year search.
How it works
The 72-second narrowband burst was so striking that researcher Jerry Ehman scrawled 'Wow!' on the printout, but despite repeated searches it was never detected again.
Why it matters
The engine treats it as strong background evidence that was ultimately undone by never repeating, yet still historically important for framing SETI's decades of null results.
The engine's record — word for word
72-second narrowband radio burst recorded by Big Ear telescope (Ohio State); Jerry Ehman's 'Wow!' annotation. Strongest candidate technosignature in SETI's 60-year history; never reproduced. Engine treatment: Tier-1 substrate-evidence node — falsified-by-non-replication, but historically load-bearing for SETI null-result framing.
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