The Wow Signal

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Static ... Hark! Listen, close! A steady, regular signal ... Radio waves ... Lone ... distant ... weak But clearly what we're looking for! Amazing ... Incredible ... Circle it! "6EQUJ5" WOW!! Over 200 light years! Search it! Again ... try again! So far, but still ... Keep searching!! Search, scan, again! Now, nothing ... Nothing. Static ...

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Maureen McGreavy The Insolent Rib

Date: 9/16/2017 7:35:00 AM

I smile, I noticed you changed the title, thought of doing the same with my "Life Insurance" figuring the title impeded reads, so I wrote another to draw the reader to it. Love "The Wow Signal", tis a friendlier title. xomo

Gregory Richard Barden
Date: 9/16/2017 8:20:00 AM

Thank you, my friend - yeah, I thought about it and decided that pretty much no one would recognize it by the frequency markers, and I wanted to attract folks who maybe didn't know the significance - in the realm of other intelligent life, there's pretty much no way that signal was just random noise from a pulsar ... really quite extraordinary!

Maureen McGreavy The Insolent Rib

Date: 9/5/2017 8:03:00 AM

Fun! If you've read my "UFO" you know I'm a believer :) xomo!

Gregory Richard Barden
Date: 9/5/2017 7:35:00 PM

Thanks, Maureen! I will have to check it out ... not many reads on this one, so I don't think people even know what the Wow! signal was, let alone 6EQUJ5, lol. Oh, well! :-)

Russell Sivey

Date: 9/5/2017 6:45:00 AM

Did we get something from a distant star? That would be amazing! I wonder what it was! This is an awesome poem about this event! I would like to have been there, me and my friend from Indiana would have loved to have heard this signal, and try to figure out what it was! You have enlightened me and have sparked my intrigue with this poem! Such a fantastic piece, Great Work Greg!!

Gregory Richard Barden
Date: 9/5/2017 6:51:00 AM

Yes, my friend, it's called The Wow! Signal and it was heard and observed by Jerry Ehman at the radio telescope in Ohio, on August 15, 1977 - he circled the readout in red and wrote "Wow!!" beside it, so it's known as the wow signal now. They scanned and scanned, but never heard it again, but it was clearly NOT static, and from over 200 light years away! I have the SETI screensaver on my pc, so I'm helping analyze signals from Arecibo on a daily basis. So awesome! I almost became an astrophysicist. Thank you for the comment, my friend!