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I’ve been meaning to write about the strange Bloop, and WOW! signals for some months, but moving home got in the way. And, now that I finally have the time, it seems that they’re becoming prevalent around the Internet again. However, as I’ve long been intrigued by both I’m going to write about them anyway, beginning with the Bloop Signal.
THE BLOOP SIGNAL
In the summer of 1997 the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) repeatedly recorded a sound that has still not been identified. It was detected by the autonomous hydrophone in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean. Such a piece of equipment is an electronic receiver able to collect data concerning sound that travels through water. It does this by converting acoustic energy into electromagnetic waves; and it is also used to track submarines. The frequency of the sound observed by NOAA rose very swiftly for around a minute and was loud enough to be heard on numerous instruments from a distance of just under 3,107 miles, with its general location being around 50oS 100oW. This is a remote locale in the South Pacific that is west of the southern tip of South America.
The hydrophone array that picked up a bizarre sound, that was christened the Bloop, is a relic of the days when the military were using them to track Soviet submarines. The system was called the Sound Surveillance System or SOSUS for short, and when the Cold War was over civilian scientists were also allowed to use it. These listening posts are a long way down in the ocean at a position where sound waves become trapped in a water level that is known as the “deep sound channel.” At this point the temperature and pressure cause the sound waves to continue to travel, without ever hitting anything, while not being dispersed by either the surface or the bottom of the ocean.
The sounds are evaluated by scrutinizing their characteristics, and their spectrograms can be likened to voice prints. Most can instantly be recognized as being, for example, the ocean current, a ship, an earthquake, volcanic action, and various types of whale. However this still leaves a few very low frequency sounds that remain unexplained.
NOAA’s equipment ruled out the Bloop signal as having come from either any man-made or geological sound. And, while the spectrogram is reminiscent of a living creature, it was identified as being unknown because it was much louder than the sound that any known marine creature could have produced. In fact it was a number of times louder than the loudest known organic sound, which is made by the Blue Whale. One scientist at NOAA ventured the thought that it might have been ice calving far away in Antarctica.
However, it's not the only odd signal that has been picked up by NOAA. They also have a list of five other mysterious sounds from their archives. These unexplained sounds have been named as Julia, Train, Slowdown, Whistle, and Upsweep. You can see images of the spectrogram for each one, and listen to a recording of each of the different sounds on this link:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/acoustics/sounds_mystery.html
And, for a comparison of the sounds that are biological, geological, and man-made, this page has images of the different spectrograms:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/acoustics/specs_all.html
It was Christopher Fox, an oceanographer for NOAA, who made the conjecture that the Bloop sound came from ice calving, and he also said that they often heard underwater noises from thousands of miles away on the other side of the Pacific Ocean basin. He added that they also expected to hear inexplicable sounds, and that the Bloop always came from the south, which is why he thought it might be ice calving.
The following web site has an in-depth article that is reprinted from the New Scientist. It interviews scientists, and gives the reasons why these anomalous sounds may come from geological, and possibly biological, sources that are well known to man.
http://www.science.org.au/nova/newscientist/102ns_001.htm
Throughout history there have been tales, told by sailors, of deep-sea monsters. So it’s not surprising that one idea as to the origin of the Bloop is that it’s a giant squid. But marine biologist Dr. Lobel, from Boston University, doubted this as he explained that as cephalopods have no gas-filled sac they are unable to make the noise heard on the Bloop spectrogram. He added that nothing can ever be entirely dismissed, but he agreed that it was in all probability to be of biological origin.
Due to the location of the sound, in the South Pacific, the suggestion that the noise was made by a deep-sea monster has led some to come up with the idea that it might have been made by Cthulhu. This is a legendary creature from a story by H. P. Lovecraft, entitled The Call of Cthulhu, who placed this entity as being found in his fictional city of R’lyeh. Micah Hanks wrote a very insightful article on his blog, towards the very end of 2008, about that whole idea. It’s still on-line and you can read it here:
http://gralienreport.com/cryptozoology/furthest-from-land-and-down-a-deep-sea-monstrosity/#more-222
Furthest From Land and Down: A Deep-Sea Monstrosity?
There is also a website devoted to the Bloop which, as might be expected, is called BloopWatch. Its introductory page has the following quote from Lovecraft: “Some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.” H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”” It has many links that you might find of interest, and you can find it here:
http://www.bloopwatch.org/
For a sceptic’s view of the whole Bloop saga you might enjoy this site:
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4177
Apart from the article itself there are also many sound images for the various other things the Bloop signal might represent; for example Whales, Volcanoes, Earthquakes, etc:.
Well, having discussed the Bloop signal, I’ll now take a look at the WOW! signal.
THE WOW! SIGNAL
Around 1959 scientists had asked themselves how Extra-terrestrials (ET) might try to communicate with us and came up with the answer that radio signals would be the best way. The radio signals, they thought, would probably be at precisely 1420 MHz, which is the vibration frequency of hydrogen. As this “hydrogen line” is a naturally occurring indicator in the spectrum they therefore concluded that all other civilizations in the universe would be aware of it, and thus be able to recognise any signal sent using its frequency.
Consequently, when on 15th August 1977 Dr. Jerry R. Ehman, Ph.D. spotted a strong signal in narrowband radio that seemed to be exactly what ET might broadcast he wrote WOW! in the margin of the computer printout. And so the WOW! signal was born. The signal lasted for seventy-two seconds, and he marked it while he was working on a SETI project using the Big Ear radio telescope at the Ohio State University.
While most radiation signals that emanate from within nature have a considerably greater range of frequencies, this signal was detected in a much smaller range. It is also the specified area within which International treaties have banned all broadcasting.
On the printout Dr. Ehman also circled the letters 6EQUJ5 as they define the intensity variation of the signal. The intensity for this signal is the "unit-less signal-to-noise ratio," where noise was averaged for that band over the preceding few minutes. According to one source that I’ve read the following also applies:
“A space denotes an intensity between 0 and 0.999.., the numbers 1 to 9 denote the correspondingly numbered intensities (from 1.000 to 9.999...), and intensities of 10.0 and above are denoted by a letter ('A' corresponds to intensities between 10.0 and 10.999..., 'B' to 11.0 to 11.999..., etc). The value 'U' (an intensity between 30.0 and 30.999...) was the highest detected by the telescope.”
And, on the printout, each column is equivalent to a 10 kHz-wide channel but the signal is only shown in one column. The bandwidth is less than 10 kHz, and although two diverse frequencies have been given, both lie within the 50 kHz frequency of the hydrogen line, which itself is at 1420.406 MHz.
The signal appears to be have been located in the Sagittarius constellation, near the Chi Sagittarius group of stars, although some have said that it came from a “blank” area of sky. The Sagittarius constellation covers an area of 867 square degrees. It has sixteen stars that have known planets, and can be found between the constellations of Ophiuchus and Capricornus.
However, as the Big Ear telescope used two feed horns in its search for signals, with each of them pointing in slightly different directions following the Earth’s rotation, it was not possible to determine which of these horns was the one that the WOW! signal actually came from. Thus the Big Ear could only observe any particular point in the sky for seventy-two seconds which is, of course, the reason that the signal was only seen for seventy-two seconds.
Due to the way that it was identified radio astrophysicists were sure that it came from one point in the sky. The fluctuation of its strength as it traversed the antenna was a precise counterpart of the antenna’s beam shape, and that would be expected if it had originated from a great distance away.
Dr. Ehman tried looking for the signal again numerous times, but he found nothing. During the following years scientists at other observatories, including the Very Large Array telescope, a more sensitive one than Big Ear, have tried to locate the signal again, but all these attempts have been without success.
There are many images of the WOW! signal printout to be found on the web, but with this one shown in the 30th Anniversary Report, written by Dr. Jerry R. Ehman, Ph.D., he notes that the image was “from a scan of a color copy of the original computer printout taken several years after the 1977 arrival of the “Wow!” signal and after the printout had faded noticeably.” The Report itself can be read here:
http://www.bigear.org/Wow30th/wow30th.htm
As previously stated, this signal has never been seen again, so where did it originate. Each researcher seems to have their own idea, depending on whether they subscribe to the ET theory, or to the purely scientific school of thought.
The ET believers they think it was an immense broadcast from some alien civilization, or that it might have come from some alien spacecraft. Additional ideas are that it came from a revolving lighthouse-type source with a frequency whose arc was accidentally discovered, or that it rotated only the once; hence the reason it has never been spotted again. However, it is also worth noting that comparable signals have been demonstrated as coming from earthly interference. So, while many maintain that it was some kind of earthly interference, those who believe otherwise point out its characteristics, and the fact that the scientists of the time believed that it came from the sky.
Most importantly, what did Dr. Ehman believe? As he never managed to find it again he thought it might have been a signal from Earth that was being reflected from a piece of space junk. Although, later he changed his mind somewhat when research indicated this idea to be improbable as the space junk would need its reflective part to be bound to rather improbable requirements in order to explain the nature of the signal, together with the fact that no transmissions are allowed in that bandwidth. But, Dr. Ehman also said that he battled against “drawing vast conclusions from half-vast data.” He added that he was “still waiting for a definitive explanation that makes sense.” Moreover, he and his associates had even looked into other options such as it having come from the naturally occurring discharges that come from stars, signals from Earth bouncing off satellites or asteroids, and they also included military broadcasts in their investigations. However, even with all of this work they concluded that none of these ideas produced convincing evidence as to the origin of the signal. As to the ET possibility, he wasn’t absolutely persuaded, although he had no better explanation.
For a list of links to articles and research on the subject check out the following page:
http://wapedia.mobi/en/Wow!_signal
It’s packed full of more information and refereneces than you probably have time to read.
If you’re interested to know about all the technicalities behind this there is an article entitled: A Search for Periodic Emmisions at the Wow Locale that also details other searches for the elusive WOW! signal, and why it’s never been found again. You can read it here:
http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/578/2/967/fulltext
Wherever the Bloop or the WOW! signals came from I think you may agree that both of them are extremely intriguing and, perhaps, one day we may find the answers.