On the night of August 15, 1977, astronomers in Ohio, US, were conducting routine observations when something extraordinary happened. At exactly 11:16 pm, a powerful radio signal, accompanied by an unusually loud noise, flashed across the receiver of the Big Ear radio telescope, a facility run by Ohio State University. The signal lasted just 72 seconds. In those brief moments, the scientific community encountered what would go down as one of the greatest space mysteries of modern times, the “Wow! Signal".

The sequence, captured in coded form by the telescope’s computer, appeared as a string of numbers and letters: “6EQUJ5". Its strength rose for 36 seconds and then fell for another 36, a pattern consistent with Earth’s rotation carrying the telescope past the source. “No one can explain w

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