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Comment by booleandilemma | Hacker News Reader

Simple programmer here. I have a dumb question. What about the "Wow!" signal is special, or unique? What makes someone see it and think "wow"? Is there some kind of information encoded in the signal?

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It's an _insanely_ powerful signal. It'd be like watching for fireflies in a field and suddenly seeing a stick of dynamite go off.

Thanks. This answer and the answers from bertman and verzali are great.

The signal's frequency is extremely narrowband and matches the natural emission frequency of hydrogen atoms. This is the most likely frequency one might choose if aiming to have an unknown recipient guess and listen in. The signal's recorded intensity followed a bell curve typical of a fixed celestial source, because as the Earth rotated, the telescope's stationary beam swept across the signal's point of origin.

There is no information in it, it looks like a continuous wave of radio energy coming from space. It is on a frequency that might be a natural one for any intelligent civilization to consider broadcasting on, and it is a narrowband signal, meaning it only covers a small range of frequencies.

2 questions. Are we capable of generating something like that particularly when that happened? and was there ever an attempt to respond in some sort?

It's a pretty easy signal to generate, even back then. I believe they've made efforts to scan the stars in that direction, but given the distance to them it would be decades or centuries until they'd see a response from us.

Right so to my understanding of what you just said, This means that it most likely wasn't from earth because of the origin location correct?

> There is no information in it

We actually don't know that. There might or might not have been some information in it; we did not capture or retain enough to be sure either way.

It had a high intensity:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal#Intensity

Other than the inherent curious nature of the signal itself, its special for no other reason than it has contributed to some amazing album art.

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