Ten Billion Tomorrows: How Science Fiction Technology Became Reality and Shapes the Future
by
Brian Clegg
Published 8 Dec 2015
These pulses can come every few seconds or as frequently as a couple of thousandths of a second apart, so fast does the star rotate. The result is, indeed, a signal that is quite unnervingly artificial sounding. The LGM-1 source was relatively quickly explained, but a second signal, the so-called “Wow! Signal,” has never had the same certainty about its cause. This was the best result yet to be discovered by the real SETI on which Ellie Arroway’s work in Contact was based. SETI emerged from Project Ozma, set up in 1960 by Frank Drake (see here) to examine radio output from Tau Ceti (then thought to be one of the most likely stars to have life-supporting planets) and Epsilon Eridani (one of the closest stars to us) to look for signals.
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The source appeared to be a location in the Sagittarius constellation, though it could not be pinned down to a specific star. The staff eagerly awaited a repeat—but none ever came. Since the detection, a number of explanations have been considered, notably an earthbound source and a one-off natural event in space, but the signal remains unusual in the annals of the SETI search. When the Wow! Signal was detected observations were still being made on a limited range of frequencies, in this case close to the hydrogen spectral line, but later work used devices capable of working across many millions of channels with no further success to date. The search continues. Originally, of course, our view of alien life was much more limited.
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See energy predictions challenge with chaos theory and rocket belt Wells’ warfare The Prestige Prey (Crichton) Priest, Christopher probes Project Daedalus Project Orion Project Ozma projectile weapons Prokhorov, Alexander prosthetics psychohistory pulsars pure energy beings quantum computers quantum entanglement communication with Dirac transmitter and encryption with quantum particles quantum teleportation quantum tunneling The Quincunx of Time (Blish) radio signals alien contact and first intergalactic interpreting SETI and “Wow! Signal” in radioactivity rail gun RAND Corporation ray guns rays refractive index relativity Einstein’s Galileo’s replicants retina scans Robby (fictional character) Roboroach “Robot Suit HAL” robots. See also nanotechnology 1950s androids distinction from bee-like functionality for humanoid in movies precursors to task-oriented rocket belts development of first flight with military funding of practical use of SF predictions of rocketry Roddenberry, Gene on cloaking device phaser creation of Romero, John Romulans (fictional characters) R.U.R.
How to Spend a Trillion Dollars
by
Rowan Hooper
Published 15 Jan 2020
On 15 August 1977, Jerry Ehman, an astronomer working at Big Ear, Ohio State University’s radio telescope in Delaware, picked up an incredible signal from 220 light years away, in the direction of Sagittarius. He wrote ‘Wow!’ on the printout from the telescope, and the burst of radio transmission has since been known among aficionados as the Wow! signal. There are two ideas for what caused the Wow! signal. The telescope was tuned to a radio frequency of 1,420 MHz, which is the wavelength of hydrogen, the dominant component of the universe. Astronomers spend a lot of time looking at this wavelength, because it reveals the most information about the structure of the galaxy.
The Signal: Watch Out for the Darkness
by
Nick Cook
Published 11 Jul 2018
But this is so far beyond what any military force on this planet is currently capable of that it isn’t funny.’ I breathed in through my nose. ‘Are we ready to leap down the rabbit hole together yet?’ Steve shook his head. ‘No, I want to rule out every other explanation first, Lauren. You know what happened with the team who were caught up in the famous Wow! signal.’ ‘Of course I do. Every astronomy student is taught how the Ohio Big Ear telescope team thought they’d captured an extraterrestrial signal.’ ‘And then you also know how much rubbish they had to deal with as well.’ ‘I do, but don’t forget the jury is still out on what that signal really was.
Beyond: Our Future in Space
by
Chris Impey
Published 12 Apr 2015
It’s likely they both were witnessing natural phenomena in the Earth’s atmosphere.5 Following Project Ozma, the Soviets did pioneering work and the largest experiment in the United States was a radio telescope the size of three football fields called “Big Ear” at Ohio State University. In 1977, a technician at Big Ear saw a booming signal on the printout and annotated it with an exclamation. The “Wow!” signal never repeated and was never identified with a celestial source; scientists consider it a dead end. Radio SETI involves searching for narrow band signals, typically less than 100 Hertz wide. That’s because a signal confined to a narrow slice of the radio dial indicates a purpose-built transmitter—think of your car radio scanning to find a station.
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G., 28, 164 Wells, Spencer, 7 White, Ed, 43 White Knight, 85 White Knight II, 88 Whittle, Frank, 69 Wigner, Eugene, 227 wind tunnels, 84 Wolfe, Tom, 272 Woman in the Moon, 28 women: in space programs, 73, 74, 142–43 see also specific individuals World War II, 30, 33–35, 33, 108, 141 World Without Us, The (Weisman), 293 wormholes, 255 “Wow!” signal, 237 Wright brothers, 69 X1 Robotic Exoskeleton, 205, 206 X-15, 71–72, 82, 85 X-37, 72, 85 XCOR, 101 Xie Haisheng, 143 Xi Jinping, 143, 144 X-planes, 71 X Prizes, 84–85, 88, 91–93, 92, 97, 147, 156, 161, 273–74, 280 Yahoo search engine, 79 Yang Hui, 24 Yang Liwei, 142 Y chromosomes, 6 Yeager, Chuck, 71, 73, 84, 272 Yeager, Jeana, 84 Year Million, 250 YouTube, 95, 213–14 Z-2 spacesuit, 195–96 Zero G Corporation, 93 zero gravity, 54, 93, 101, 148 physiological effects of, 114–15, 167–68 sex in, 200, 214 Zhang Yuhua, 162 Zheng He, 109 Zip2, 95 Zond 5, 49 Zubrin, Robert, 166, 168, 169, 174, 223 ALSO BY CHRIS IMPEY Humble Before the Void Shadow World Dreams of Other Worlds How It Began How It Ends The Living Cosmos Copyright © 2015 by Chris Impey All rights reserved First Edition For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W.
Lost at Sea
by
Jon Ronson
Published 1 Oct 2012
Paul wants to end on an optimistic note and so he mentions the one time in SETI history when something broke the silence. “We call it the Wow signal,” he says. “It was a radio telescope in Ohio, back in the days when they didn’t have the electronic gadgetry to go ‘ping’ if there was something weird. So they looked at a computer printout some weeks afterward, and it showed a signal that went on for seventy-two seconds. Nobody was listening at the time. The researcher wrote ‘Wow’ in the margin. And many times radio telescopes have been turned on that star, but nothing odd has ever happened again.” “Should we feel excited by the Wow signal?” “I’ve often wondered,” Paul says. He puts on his coat.
50 Future Ideas You Really Need to Know
by
Richard Watson
Published 5 Nov 2013
So what’s it all about? I suspect the answer has something to do with a desire for magic in a rational and scientific age. We would like to believe in something much bigger than ourselves too. the condensed idea Are we alone? timeline 1855 First exoplanet false alarm 1960 Drake equation 1977 “Wow!” Signal (a radio signal picked up by SETI in 1977) 1995 Discovery of 51 Pegasi b, an orbiting planet 2001 Exoplanet HD 28185b found in habitable zone 2012 Discovery that exoplanet GJ 1214b is covered in water 2036 Evidence found that life on Earth started in space 2066 First contact with alien life form (it’s not where we expect) 41 Cell phone radiation There are more than 5 billion cell phones on the planet, plus countless other mobile devices connected to wireless networks.
The Human Cosmos: A Secret History of the Stars
by
Jo Marchant
Published 15 Jan 2020
Martin Ryle, by this time the U.K.’s Astronomer Royal, was horrified such contact would be attempted without a proper public debate. He wrote to Drake, complaining that it was “very hazardous to reveal our existence and location to the Galaxy; for all we know, any creatures out there might be malevolent—or hungry.” Arecibo also broadcast a reply to the Wow! signal, in 2012. Sponsored by National Geographic, this signal included around ten thousand Twitter messages, labeled with the hashtag #ChasingUFOs. In late 2017, a nonprofit group called METI International began its own efforts to message extraterrestrial intelligence by sending a music-based math primer to a nearby exoplanet
Life's Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code
by
Matthew Cobb
Published 6 Jul 2015
Shapiro, B. and Hofreiter, M., ‘A paleogenomic perspective on evolution and gene function: new insights from ancient DNA’, Science, vol. 343, 2014, article 1236573. Shapiro, J. A., ‘Revisiting the Central Dogma in the twenty-first century’, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, vol. 1178, 2009, pp. 6–28. shCherbak, V. I. and Makukov, M. A., ‘The “Wow! signal” of the terrestrial genetic code’, Icarus, vol. 224, 2013, pp. 228–42. Shea, N., ‘What’s transmitted? Inherited information’, Biology and Philosophy, vol. 26, 2011, pp. 183–9. Shen, P. S., Park, J., Qin, Y., et al., ‘Rqc2p and 60S ribosomal subunits mediate mRNA-independent elongation of nascent chains’, Science, vol. 347, 2015, pp. 75–8.