We may not be alone...how did we not know?

One of the things I love about the web, and interesting news sites like digg, the new Netscape, and Original Signal is stumbling across some sort of piece of information I never knew...and should have. For instance, take this example of a comparatively massive radio signal we received...from space. Yes, all you Contact fans, it actually happened: a full on, ET Phoning Us signal, so powerful it made the person monitoring the signal note "WOW!" on the record, and it has been known as the WOW signal ever since.

Now, get this: it happened almost 20 years ago. 2 decades, I never even heard of this. No, it has not been repeated (nor were there any encoded signals captured for special plans for teleporters, alas), which, of course, led to speculation it was an anomaly. Here's the part of the article I found most convincing, however:

The signal's original discoverer Jerry Ehman doesn't care to speculate on its source, and he remains scientifically skeptical. "Even if it were intelligent beings sending a signal," he said in an interview, "they'd do it far more than once. We should have seen it again when we looked for it 50 times."

Perhaps. But consider that when humankind used the Arecibo radio telescope to send a message out into space in 1974, it was only sent once.

Makes you think...and hope.

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