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In 1977, astronomers received a powerful, peculiar radio signal from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. Its frequency was the same as neutral hydrogen, and astronomers had speculated that any ETIs attempting to communicate would naturally use this frequency. Now the signal, named the Wow! Signal has become lore in the SETI world.

But what was it?

Beginning in the 1970s, the Ohio State University Big Ear radio telescope was used in the university’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program, which ran from 1973 to 1995. This program is the longest-running SETI program in history.

In 1977, Big Ear detected a peculiar signal that’s taken on a life of its own: the Wow! Signal. The Wow! Signal was a strong narrowband radio signal right near the frequency of neutral hydrogen. The Big Ear telescope is long gone now, but the effort to understand what the signal is lives on.

The signal lasted the full 72-second window in which Big Ear was able to observe it. A few days later, astronomer Jerry R. Ehman was looking over the data when he saw the signal on a computer printout. Astronomers had never seen anything like it, and he wrote “Wow!” beside it, and the name has stuck ever since.

The Wow! signal from 1977 as discovered by astronomer Jerry R. Ehman. Image via Big Ear Radio Observatory and North American AstroPhysical Observatory (NAAPO).

The signal has another name: 6EQUJ5. This has been interpreted as a message hidden in the signal, but it really represents how the signal’s intensity varied over time.

This image is a plot of the Wow! signal’s intensity versus time. Image Credit: By Maxrossomachin – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16197844

The signal generated a lot of excitement. Some thought it was extraterrestrial in origin, some thought it could come from some type of human-generated interference, and some thought it could be from an unexplained natural phenomenon.

New research shows that the Wow! Signal has an entirely natural explanation.

The research is “Arecibo Wow! I: An Astrophysical Explanation for the Wow! Signal.” The lead author is Abel Méndez from the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo. It’s available at the pre-print server arxiv.org.

Arecibo Wow! is a new effort based on an archival study of data from the now-defunct Arecibo Radio Telescope from 2017 to 2020. The observations from Arecibo are similar to those from Big Ear but “are more sensitive, have better temporal resolution, and include polarization measurements,” according to the authors.

“Our latest observations, made between February and May 2020, have revealed similar narrowband signals near the hydrogen line, though less intense than the original Wow! Signal,” said Méndez.

Arecibo detected signals similar to the Wow! signal but with some differences. They’re far less intense and come from multiple locations. The authors say these signals are easily explained by an astrophysical phenomenon and that the original Wow! signal is, too.

“We hypothesize that the Wow! Signal was caused by sudden brightening from stimulated emission of the hydrogen line due to a strong transient radiation source, such as a magnetar flare or a soft gamma repeater (SGR),” the researchers write. Those events are rare and rely on precise conditions and alignments. They can cause clouds of hydrogen to brighten considerably for seconds or even minutes.

This simple schematic shows how the Wow! Signal was generated and detected. A radiative source such as a magnetar or a soft gamma repeater is positioned behind a cloud of cold neutral hydrogen. Energy from the source stimulates emission from the HI cloud, which brightens abruptly and is observable from Earth. Image Credit: Méndez et al. 2024.

The researchers say that what Big Ear saw in 1977 was the transient brightening of one of several H1 (neutral hydrogen) clouds in the telescope’s line of sight. The 1977 signal was similar to what Arecibo saw in many respects. “The only difference between the signals observed in Arecibo and the Wow! Signal is their brightness. It is precisely the similarity between these spectra that suggests a mechanism for the origin of the mysterious signal,” the authors write.

These signals are rare because the spatial alignment between source, cloud, and observer is rare. The rarity of alignment explains why detections are so rare.

The researchers were able to identify the clouds responsible for the signal but not the source. Their results suggest that the source is much more distant than the clouds that produce the hydrogen signal. “Given the detectability of the clouds as demonstrated in our data, this insight could enable precise location of the signal’s origin and permit continuous monitoring for subsequent events,” the researchers explain.

The Wow! Signal was originally interpreted as a technosignature by many. By explaining where the signal came from, this research outlines a new source of false positives.

“Our hypothesis explains all observed properties of the Wow! Signal, proposes a new source of false positives in technosignature searches, and suggests that the Wow! Signal could be the first recorded event of an astronomical maser flare in the hydrogen line,” the authors explain in their conclusion.

The post The Wow! Signal Deciphered. It Was Hydrogen All Along. appeared first on Universe Today.

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What’s wrong with boys and men these days?

Boys and men are struggling. Profound economic and social changes of recent decades have many losing ground in the classroom, the workplace, and in the family. While the lives of women have changed, the lives of many men have remained the same or even worsened. Our attitudes, our institutions, and our laws have failed to keep up. Conservative and progressive politicians, mired in their own ideological warfare, fail to provide thoughtful solutions.

The father of three sons, a journalist, and the founding president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, Richard V. Reeves has spent twenty-five years worrying about boys both at home and work. His book, Of Boys and Men, along with his American Institute for Boys and Men, tackles the complex and urgent crisis of boyhood and manhood. Reeves looks at the structural challenges that face boys and men and offers fresh and innovative solutions that turn the page on the corrosive narrative that plagues this issue. Of Boys and Men argues that helping the other half of society does not mean giving up on the ideal of gender equality.

Reeves says that gender equality is not a zero-sum game. We can do more for boys and men without doing less for women and girls. We can be passionate about women’s rights, and compassionate towards the struggles of boys and men. Of course there remain many gender gaps where women and girls remain at a disadvantage, especially in terms of pay, senior positions of leadership, access to venture capital, and so on. But in advanced economies, there are also gender gaps where boys and men have now fallen behind, especially if they are Black or from a lower-income background.

Richard Reeves is the founding president of the American Institute for Boys and Men. Before founding AIBM in 2023, Reeves was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution where he focused on policies related to economic inequality, racial justice, social mobility, and boys and men. Reeves is the author of several books, including Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why it Matters, and What to do About It and Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That is a Problem, and What to do About It. Inspired by his own experiences as a father and policy expert, Richard founded the American Institute for Boys and Men to bring awareness to the challenges facing boys and men today and to develop evidence-based solutions. In June, philanthropist Melinda French Gates announced she will be donating over $1B over the next two years to support women’s rights, and one of the recipients was the American Institute for Boys and Men founded by Richard Reeves to the tune of $20 million.

Shermer and Reeves discuss:

• The gender gap in higher education is wider today than it was in 1972, when Title IX was passed, but the other way round, with men earning only 42 percent of degrees
• In the average school district, boys are almost a grade level behind girls in English language arts (there is no gap in Math)
• The risk of suicide is four times higher for boys and men than their female peers and has risen by more than a third among younger men since 2010
• Male deaths before the age of 65 resulted in over 4 million years of potential life lost in 2022, three times the number for women
• Employment rates among Black men are lower than for white men, white women, and Black women
• Couples whose first child is a daughter are less likely to have more children than those whose firstborn is a son.
• Adoptive parents are willing to pay about $20,000 more for a girl than a boy, according to one U.S. study.
• Mothers of sons are often treated as if they have contracted a chronic disease, as Ruth Whippman reports in her book BoyMom. When she told a friend that her third child, conceived through in vitro fertilization, was going to be her third son, the response was: “I could understand it for a girl, but why go through all that just for another boy?”
• Progressive left excoriating their “toxic masculinity” and a reactionary right telling them to “man up” and resist the “feminization” of society
• Ruth Whippman’s Rebels with a Cause: Reimagining Boys, Ourselves, and Our Culture by Niobe Way talks about the “Boy Code.” This code consists in the privileging of certain masculine attributes, including “stoicism, independence, assertiveness, thinking, and crunching numbers,” and the devaluation of “soft” capacities, such as “vulnerability, dependency, sensitivity, feeling, and the analyses of words and language.” She also indicts the Boy Code for a range of other social and economic pathologies. “‘Boy’ culture is rooted in ideologies that intersect with one another,” she writes, “including but not limited to patriarchy, capitalism, white supremacy, homophobia, and transphobia.” Ms. Way laments the “masculine bias that undergirds neoliberalism” and claims that “because ‘boy’ culture is in bed with capitalism, money is valued over love.”

However:

• Income inequality: why do women make .84 cents on the dollar compared to men
• Fortune 500 CEOs: only 10.4 percent are women
• Congress: 72 percent men, 28 percent women
• I thought the future was female?
• Education
• Work/Labor market
• Family
• Marriage
• Divorce/custody/spousal support/child support
• What the political left gets wrong about boys and men
• What the political right gets wrong about boys and men
• Solutions: Fatherhood as an independent institution.

“In a zero-sum political environment, merely drawing attention to the problems of boys and men can be seen as somehow downplaying the ongoing challenges facing girls and women. This is why Democrats, in particular, are so reluctant to directly address male issues. That is a recipe for bad politics…”

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A weird quantum phenomenon called delocalisation has been measured for a 100-nanometre glass bead, helping reveal where the boundary lies between quantum and classical physics

High-resolution images show large spots on the surface of Polaris.

Researchers have succeeded in something that has been pursued since the 1970s: explaining the X-ray radiation from the black hole surroundings. The radiation originates from the combined effect of the chaotic movements of magnetic fields and turbulent plasma gas.

Researchers have succeeded in something that has been pursued since the 1970s: explaining the X-ray radiation from the black hole surroundings. The radiation originates from the combined effect of the chaotic movements of magnetic fields and turbulent plasma gas.

Machine learning models have become increasingly popular for risk assessment of chemical compounds. However, they are often considered 'black boxes' due to their lack of transparency. To increase confidence in these models, researchers proposed carefully identifying the areas of chemical space where these models are weak. They developed an innovative software tool for this purpose, and the results of this research approach have just been published.

Researchers develop a one pot process to transform aromatic ketones to esters, offering advancements in pharmaceutical synthesis and materials science.

Scientists have developed photoresponsive supramolecular polymers that can undergo both intrachain folding and interchain aggregation.

A new adaptive 3D printing system can identify the positions of randomly distributed organisms and safely move them to specific locations for assembly.

A new adaptive 3D printing system can identify the positions of randomly distributed organisms and safely move them to specific locations for assembly.

Engineering researchers have successfully developed a quantum microprocessor chip for molecular spectroscopy simulation of actual large-structured and complex molecules.

Engineering researchers have successfully developed a quantum microprocessor chip for molecular spectroscopy simulation of actual large-structured and complex molecules.

James Joyce's tome 'Finnegans Wake' famously breaks the rules of normal prose through its unusual, dreamlike stream of consciousness, and new work in chaos theory takes a closer look at how Joyce's challenging novel stands out mathematically. Researchers compared the distribution of punctuation marks in various experimental novels to determine the underlying order of 'Finnegans Wake' and by statistically analyzing the texts, researchers found the tome exhibits an unusual but statistically identifiable structure. The wide singularity spectrum was perfectly symmetrical, meaning sentence length variability follows an orderly curve.

James Joyce's tome 'Finnegans Wake' famously breaks the rules of normal prose through its unusual, dreamlike stream of consciousness, and new work in chaos theory takes a closer look at how Joyce's challenging novel stands out mathematically. Researchers compared the distribution of punctuation marks in various experimental novels to determine the underlying order of 'Finnegans Wake' and by statistically analyzing the texts, researchers found the tome exhibits an unusual but statistically identifiable structure. The wide singularity spectrum was perfectly symmetrical, meaning sentence length variability follows an orderly curve.

Our understanding of Venus' water history and the potential that it was once habitable in the past is being challenged by recent observations.

Citizen science is such a great concept. Using the combined computing power of a gazillion (exaggeration) desktop and laptops to churn through data is an excellent and efficient way of analysing volumes of data. This has been shown yet again as a star has been identified to be hurtling out to intergalactic space! Most stars in the Milky Way are not travelling fast enough to be able to escape its immense gravity but the suspected brown dwarf is travelling at 1.5 million km/h, fast enough to escape. 

The concept of using members of the public to support scientific endeavours dates back further than you might think. One of the earliest examples can be seen in the 19th century when the Christmas Bird Count was launched by the Audubon Society in 1900. It encouraged members of the public to track bird populations. When it comes to space science projects like SETI@Home are among those that spring to mind. 

A home PC running SETI at Home helping to churn through observational data Credit: SETI@home

Another citizen science project ‘Planet 9’ was launched by Backyard Worlds and to date, it has 82,690 volunteers signed up. The goal is to hunt for possible distant planets in our Solar System or previously unidentified brown dwarfs in our solar neighbourhood. It takes images from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and shares them with its volunteers who then study them for objects that are moving. 

While hunting for objects worthy of study, a team of volunteers; Martin Kabatnik, Thomas P.Bickle and Dan Caselden identified a fast moving object which became known by the catchy title CWISE J124909.08+362116.0. Observations were scheduled after its discovery by several ground based instruments that showed it was moving so fast that it will eventually escape the gravitational pull of the Milky Way, heading out to intergalactic space. It’s the first object with a mass smaller than or similar to that of a star that has been seen travelling at such eye watering speeds – 1.5 milllion km/h! To mark the citizen scientists contribution they are named as co-authors to the study which has recently been published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. 

Artist’s concept of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer as its orbit around Earth. Credit: NASA/JPL

Quite what CWISE J1249 is remains a little bit of a mystery at the moment. It has a low mass suggesting either a low mass star or possibly a gas giant planet or maybe something in between known as a brown dwarf. It has also been found to have less iron and other metals in the core than other stars and brown dwarfs. The composition suggests it may be quite old and perhaps one of the first generations of stars from the Milky Way. If it is a brown dwarf then in itself it is not particularly rare. ‘Planet 9’ has discovered more than 4,000 of them alone but none are travelling at such a great speed that they will escape the Galaxy. 

It’s not just the nature of the object that is perplexing astronomers, its high speed to has been the subject of much debate. One theory suggests it could have been a part of a binary system with a white dwarf. The white dwarf would slowly accrete material from its companion leading to an explosion when the material reaches a critical point. This event may have provided the energy to accelerate the object out of the system and beyond.  Alternatively it may have been a part of a cluster which was ejected through gravitational interactions. 

Source : NASA Citizen Scientists Spot Object Moving 1 Million Miles Per Hour

The post Citizen Scientists Find a Star Escaping the Milky Way appeared first on Universe Today.

The latest research on caffeine reveals why coffee and decaf can be so good for your health, but energy drinks can be lethal

Empty space is nothing but. According to the weird rules of quantum mechanics, it’s actually filled with an endless amount of energy, known appropriately enough as vacuum energy.

Quantum mechanics is super weird. One of the lessons of the quantum is that particles, like electrons and photons and neutrinos and whatnot, aren’t what they seem to be. Instead, each of the particles that we see in nature is actually just a piece of a much larger, grander entity. These grander entitles are known as quantum fields, and the fields soak every bit of space and time, all throughout the universe.

There is a quantum field for every kind of particle: one field for the electrons, one for the photons, and so on. These fields are invisible to us, but they make up the fundamental building blocks of existence. They are constantly vibrating and buzzing. When the fields vibrate with enough energy, particles appear. When the fields die down, the particles disappear. (Another way to look at this is to say what we call a “particle” is really a localized vibration of a quantum field). When two particles interact, it’s really just two pieces of quantum fields interacting with each other.

So if you think about all the particles that make up your body, all the electrons and protons and neutrons, those particles are just local vibrations of entities that span the entire cosmos. Neat.

These quantum fields are always vibrating, even when those vibrations aren’t strong enough to produce a particle. If you take a box and empty out all of the stuff – all the electrons, all the photons, all the neutrinos, all the everything – the box is still filled with these quantum fields. Since those fields vibrate even in isolation, that means that the box is filled with invisible vacuum energy, also know as zero-point energy – the energy of these fundamental vibrations.

This means that the vacuum of the universe is really made of something. There’s no such thing as a true vacuum; wherever you go, there are always vibrating quantum fields.

We know that the vacuum energy – this incessant boiling and vibrating of the quantum fields – interacts with the everyday world. For example, electrons inside of atoms occasionally move to more distant orbits away from the nucleus. There’s no reason for the electrons to make their way back down, until they get jostled by the quantum fields, prompting them to fall back into their normal orbital place.

I know this all sounds weird and new-agey, but it’s a real thing. Everywhere you go in the universe, there’s always something.

The post The Secrets Hiding in the Vacuum appeared first on Universe Today.

Computer code dating back to the 1960s is still vital to banks, airlines and governments, but programmers familiar with the language are in short supply. Now AI models are being trained to fill the skills gap