Hubble Hones In on a Hypergiants Home : The super star cluster Westerlund 1, only 15,000 light-years away in our Milky Way neighborhood, hosts one of the largest stars ever discovered.
A signal sequence that lasted for 72 seconds in 1977 but has never been seen again. The signal appeared to come from a globular cluster in the Sagittarius constellation, but to this day no definite answer for where the signal originated can be given.
After numerous checks and re-checks, it’s been found to have definitely come from an extraterrestrial source.
It was broadcast at 1420 MHz. This frequency isn’t used by Earth communications for science reasons. It’s a frequency which neutral hydrogen emits at in interstellar space and is useful in radio astronomy.
Interestingly, emitting a strong signal at this frequency is a likely way to get someone’s attention if there’s anyone listening, because any other radio astronomers in the universe will definitely know of it and be making observations of it.
That really is a very strong signal. Against the backgrounds, it looks to me like about 30 standard deviations (give or take).
Actually, that globular cluster (M55) is just the closest object to the transmission’s source. It appeared to have come from a region of mostly empty space (though it’s worth remembering that distant red dwarfs or brown dwarfs could be too faint to be detectable).
The astronomer who found this and scrawled “Wow!” on that printout was Jerry Ehman at the Big Ear radio telescope in Ohio. Credit where it’s due.
Despite a lot of efforts, this kind of signal has only ever been recorded this one time. There’s a chance we may never know what it was.
It is unlike any other kind of phenomenon ever observed in astronomy. The only logical scientific explanation is that it was one of two things: Either it was a completely unknown and incredibly rare astronomical phenomenon which modern astronomy is completely unaware of – or it was an intercepted alien transmission. There are no other possibilities.
Either it was a completely unknown and incredibly rare astronomical phenomenon which modern astronomy is completely unaware of – or it was an intercepted alien transmission. There are no other possibilities.
It’s way too late for this, but it’s important to note that NASA didn’t discover the new earth-like planets. It was a group of astronomers lead by a dude name Michaël Gillon from the University of Liège in Belgium. Giving NASA credit for this gives the United States credit for something they didn’t do, and we already have a problem with making things about ourselves so. just like…be mindful. I’d be pissed if I discovered a small solar system and credit was wrongfully given to someone else.
This is valid. NASA’s involvement in this was predominantly in the use of of Spitzer data to validate findings from a primarily European funded program (TRAPPIST). There were Americans (or at least, an American) on the team, but beyond it being a collaborative and data-sharing arrangement this isn’t primarily an Agency achievement.
I’m here for the Belgians in the tags and also…totally didn’t know trappist was the name of a beer, I fucking love learning shit on my own posts.
some of my favourite absolutely SICK facts about the trappist-1 exoplanets:
– theyre all very close to one another and to their star, so the length of a year on them varies from 1 to 20 DAYS
– since they’re so close, the star appears a lot bigger than our sun from earth, and from one planet you could easily see the rest, some would even appear bigger than the moon from earth. you could literally see the surface of another planet with the naked eye!!!
– they’re probably tidally locked to their star like our moon is locked to earth, meaning only one side of a planet ever faces the star, and on the other side it’s always night. the sun never sets or rises on any of the planets
– the star is red, so the sunlight is red/orange, meaning if, for example, plants were to grow there, they could be black
and that’s just what we know now, imagine how much cool stuff we have yet to discover about the trappist-1 system
the solar system is probably most purely, simply fun exploratory experience humans will ever get to have, because there’s nobody there! there’s no colonialism and we don’t have to worry about aliens yet, so its just. fun!
we just land a robot on an empty planet and make it do wheelies and every few days we find like a cool rock and scientists yell about it on twitter
failed2be-chill 