all UFO caused by me

I hope we can all be mature adults here and agree that the Wow! signal was sent by aliens.

Seriously though…

The Wow! signal was one single impossibly strong radio signal picked up by the Big Ear telescope in 1977. We have never picked up a similar signal before or since, yet it remains the strongest possible evidence that we are not alone.

Back in the 70s computers didn’t have enough processing power to analyze all the information picked up by these telescopes, who would move back and forth across the sky 24/7. Instead SETI would get volunteers to go through mountains of printed-out data by hand and mark any numbers that stood out. One such volunteer was Jerry R. Ehman.

On the day Jerry was going through this data he’d mostly been marking 7′s and 9′s and 6′s - high numbers, likely from planets, comets, and other regular objects in space. Then all of a sudden, in-between a bunch of 1′s, there it was: 6EQUJ5. A radio signal so strong it broke the number scale and jumped straight to letters. 30 times stronger than background radiation. All he could do was write “Wow!” next to the observation.

Of course telescopes were immediately pointed in the direction of the signal, which was somewhere around the Sagittarius constellation. But it was never picked up again.

The signal was continuous in strength, and the only reason it seems to rise and fall in intensity is that the telescope was moving as it picked up the signal. When graphed it looks like this:

The observed rising and falling in intensity in time with the telescope’s movement means that the signal must have come from a fixed point in the sky. However, the fact that the signal was only heard once means that it can’t have come from a regular object like a star or a black hole, as we would’ve been able to hone in on that and pick it up again.

The signal was sent at a frequency of 1420 megaherz - the frequency of hydrogen. If you want to send a radio signal to a civilization that you know nothing about, you need to pick a frequency that the observers are likely to be looking for. You need to pick a benchmark, something that naturally emits radio waves at a set frequency, and that they will be familiar with. Hydrogen is the most abundant and the simplest element in the universe. Every scientist in the universe knows it. The frequency was and still is illegal to use on Earth because it’s considered significant to science.

Technically the signal was very slightly above the frequency of hydrogen - it was observed at 1420.4556 MHz. This could mean that the object that sent it is moving towards us (extremely slowly btw, we won’t make contact with it for another couple billion years at least). Or, more likely, it could mean that the source corrected the signal for red- or blueshift (a phenomenon where a wavelength increases/decreases due to various factors) before sending it. The latter explanation is most likely since the slight difference from hydrogen lines up with how the frequency would be corrected to line up with the galactic standard of rest.

Another reason we believe the signal was made by a civilization is that it’s narrow-banded, meaning it stays at its own frequency and doesn’t leak into other frequencies. The only known objects in space to emit narrow-band radiowaves are astrophysical masers - which, again, don’t behave like the Wow! signal did.

So in summary, this is a very powerful narrow-band radio signal that appears technological in origin and is sent at the exact frequency at which we would expect people to send a signal.

But like I said, the signal has never been picked up again. It might just have been a single burst. We still hope it might be periodic, but even if it is, we have no idea when it might repeat itself. The Big Ear was demolished in the 90s, and there are no projects exactly like it at the moment. We aren’t observing that single spot in the Sagittarius region 24/7. We simply can’t afford to.

If we can’t observe the signal, if we can’t study and verify the signal… the rule of thumb among astronomers is that it doesn’t really matter. It’s evidence of something, but it’s not proof of anything. If the signal is ever picked up again it will be proof that we are not alone. But until then, all we can do is speculate.

If the signal is extraterrestrial, it tells us that we aren’t alone. That somewhere on another planet there are scientists with a radio transmitter, who want us to know about them. Maybe the signal was their equivalent of the Voyager Golden Records or the Arecibo Message - we know no one can respond to those. But just the thought that someone else in the universe might know about us - might even be comforted by knowing that they’re not alone - is in itself comforting. All we can do is tell other people, over and over, that we share this universe, and just hope that they might one day respond.

Happy birthday to the Wow!-Signal

sum propz

police ship was good they wanted sirens on it and the classic cherries and berries and then i wanted to give it like....riot shield elements so it all added up nicely. swish.

that 1yplays guy: so for te mothership can you design a ufo like the one from fire in the sky

me, i guess: no good imgs of it found on first couple img search results. you get these

and we land on this in the end. swish x2 even though you only see it for two seconds

the bosses, again: can you just give us like a regular flying saucer

me (again also, i guess): yes but can i interest you in futuro house instead

also find below jombingtons knife and some devilish beverages variation from euhhh whatever the episode is where the boss marries the valley girl demon

not mad impressive but quite fun to desoign

I low-key love the fact that sci-fi has so conditioned us to expect to be hanging out with a bunch of cool space aliens, that legitimate, actual scientists keep proposing the most bizarre, three-blunts-into-the-rotation "theories" to explain the fact we're not.

Some of my favourites include:

Zoo Theory: What if there are loads of aliens out there, but they're not talking to us because of the Prime Directive from Star Trek? (Or because they're doing experiments on us???)

Dark Forest Theory: What if there are loads of aliens out there, but they all hate us and each other so they're all just waiting with a shotgun pointed at the door, ready to open fire on anything that moves?

Planetarium Theory: What if there's at least one alien with mastery over light and matter that's just making it seem to us that the universe is empty to us as, like, a joke?

Berserker Theory: What if there were loads of aliens, but one of them made infinite killer robots that murdered everyone and are coming for us next?!!

Like, the universe is at least 13,700,000,000 years old and 46,000,000,000 light years big. We have had the ability to transmit and receive signals for, what, 100 years, and our signals have so far travelled 200 light years?

The fact is biological life almost certainly has, does, or will develop elsewhere in the universe, and it's not impossible that a tiny amount of it has, does, or will develop in a way that we would understand as "intelligent". But, like, we're realistically never going to know because of the scale of the things involved.

So I'm proposing my own hypothesis. I call it the "Fool in a Field" hypothesis. It goes like this:

Humanity is a guy standing in the middle of a field at midnight. It's pitch black, he can't move, and he's been standing there for ages. He's just had the thought to swing his arms. He swings one of his arms, once, and does not hit another person. "Oh no!" He says. "Robots have killed them all!"

I need to be kidnapped by kind aliens who take me to the alien vet and they know exactly what's wrong with me and they cure me and feed me nutritious meals

I finally (got help) slapping Wordpress into shape and Runaway to the Stars is now releasing as a public webcomic! Thank you so much for your support over the years, and sticking with me while I'm slowly chewing my way through this book. I'm very excited to share this story! It'll be updating every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday thanks to the massive Patreon backlog. Patreon will continue to update as I finish pages, which happens on a sporadic non-schedule.

If you experience bugs with the site report them to me. Some things may occasionally break, as coding problems tend to be a very "whack-a-mole" affair; and I'm still getting used to the interface.

Kidnapped and experimented on by aliens but I was in the control group so nothing happened

My take on a fan hawkdog because i love @jayrockin's spec guys (bc if you make spec domestics i will try to make one as cursed as possible)

An extreme toy hawkdog, the breed is called turaco since they were allegedly bred to resemble one by humans. malocclusion is a disqualifying fault in conformation but extreme deformities of the skull make crossbills much more common than in the general population. early training to tolerate beak trims is an absolute must, even individuals with seemingly aligned bites can develop a crossbill later in life. non-centaur aliens who are not familiar with the lineage's respiratory system will try to breed for bigger excurrent nostrils to offset the small and obstructed intake nostrils, however barometric plethysmography shows no statistically significant improvements in breathing. the one pictured is a neglected rescue, her name is officially Mushy Peas.

an example of a "well bred" turaco and their freak skull

I can't believe you combined the "cute" traits that humans select for with the "cute" traits centaurs like into the ultimate deformed domestic nightmare. 10/10

I don't even like blasting my ray gun anymore. I don't like flying my UFO around anymore

don't say that

I don't even like invading planets

dumb idea

all this stuff about "humanity is the X species" doesn't work for me taken as a conclusion about humanity because we simply do not have any other hnau to compare ourselves with

take any direction and you can imagine an alien species that is a bit in that direction from humans, and call humans the species embodying the opposite of that

yeah so the posts where this kind of makes sense are the ones that are space opera worldbuilding ideas. Like they're explicitly proposing, what if we discovered alien species and they were less X than humans.

one I remember that didn't invoke aliens was saying like, humans are the X species, and then said at the end, if you don't do this you're "broken". So the comparison really was within humans, some are more "human" than others. A dirty trick imo.

And that made me kind of suspicious of the worldbuilding posts. How do you treat the humans who are more like aliens?

I liked the post I made back when where we were the only sexually reproducing spacefaring species; our diversity encompassed and exceeded all others’ to a degree they found unsettling and threatening, because they were all whiptail lizards who got along p well within their sister-lines AND ascribed their rise to space to the fitness of their prevailing ‘type’. The different aliens were happy to accept each other, but had a lot of trouble accepting humans beyond specific, famously acceptable humans. I was trying to come up with a truly incomprehensible racism and wound up with “meritocratic phrenology” since to the aliens there would be no “eu” genics, all remixes and recombinations would be tragic and bad. Individual humans could be fine but their children would be uniformly deviant abominations. And then even when you clone us our clones sort of suck (nature vs nurture, etc)…

They’d be charmed and relieved by twins I suppose.

Gods, you could write SUCH hilarious scenes with this where all the aliens meet human babies and are just like "D:> D:> D:>" thinking they're weird reproduction-mutants XD XD

Also I don't actl think the sitch you're suggesting is THAT out there? Like: I seem to recall you once(might have been on discord instead of here) bringing up the accurate point that it'd be easier to send robot-ships equipped with cloning/artificial-womb facilities to explore space, creating "crew" if and when they need it/find a suitable environment for human habitation, and one could easily imagine THAT being the general strategy for space exploration?

So, by the time Humans encounter these other species, even the ones who DID have a sexually reproducing past, they've long ago shifted to artificial reproduction+Expedited Aging/Excised Adolescent Incapacity as the culturally acceptable method for reproduction, and they just find the whole live-birth thing various forms of unsightly. Some of them probably see it as some Sick Kink Thing like "Little BABIES running around??? UGH! I did NOT sign up to be a part in your SCENE you freak >:( >:(" XD

We really learned things in 2023

It's bullshit. The man confessed before congress that he has never seen these alleged UFOs nor any alleged "non-human" bodies, he's merely claiming that he knew "a military superior" (Grush has never identified quite who this is) who told him that the US government possessed alleged UFOs and alleged "non-human bodies."

In reality, there is absolutely nothing to back up Officer Grush's claims. He cites no statistics, has come forward with no leaked documents, nor provided any photo evidence to back up his claims - nor does he even allege to have seen these seized UFOs and reclaimed "non-human bodies" that he claims the US government is in possession of. The people who testified with him just spouted unspecific and vague generalizations about how Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) are often unreported by Air Force pilots. Officer Graves did not conduct a rigorous study, and merely pulls the 5% statistic out of his ass when testifying.

This is just hearsay and baseless claims of an "alien salvaging" program by the US government with virtually no evidence backing these claims. Furthermore, both NASA and the Department of Defense have independently stated that no such program exists. And given the absolute lack of proof given by Grush during these hearings, I think we can feel confident that the preponderance of evidence points to these claims being unreal and fake.

i want there to be secret aliens as much as the next guy but think about all the absolutely atrocious heartbreaking looney tunes EVIL military and cia secrets that got leaked that we know about. we know about the radiation testing on civilian populations and we know about the assassinations of elected presidents and so on and so on. what's an alien autopsy to all that?

if any american political party in the last forty years could have said 'aliens are real and you need to fork over all your constitutional rights to prepare for the possibility of Space War' im pretty sure someone would have tried it already.

The Thang

Having sex with aliens is beastiality!!!

@afloweroutofstone

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