Jerry R. Ehman

Wow!

Jerry R. Ehman is an American astronomer who first detected the strong narrowband radio signal known as the Wow! signal of August 15, 1977 while working on a SETI project at the Big Ear radio telescope of Ohio State University.

Sourced

• Wow!
  • Notation on the printout of what became known as the Wow! signal (August 1977).

• A person not familiar with all of the special knowledge about a particular instrument should not try to draw too many conclusions from printed data. Such data typically contains certain assumptions about the equipment not necessarily known to outsiders.
  • The Big Ear Wow! Signal : What We Know and Don't Know About It After 20 Years (1 September 1997); section: Vast Conclusions from "Half-Vast" Data

• Since all of the possibilities of a terrestrial origin have been either ruled out or seem improbable, and since the possibility of an extraterrestrial origin has not been able to be ruled out, I must conclude that an ETI (ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) might have sent the signal that we received as the Wow! source. Of course, being a scientist, I await the reception of additional signals like the Wow! source that are able to be received and analyzed by many observatories. Thus, I must state that the origin of the Wow! signal is still an open question for me. There is simply too little data to draw many conclusions. In other words, as I stated above, I choose not to "draw vast conclusions from 'half-vast' data".
  • The Big Ear Wow! Signal : What We Know and Don't Know About It After 20 Years (1 September 1997); section: ETI

External links

• The Big Ear Wow! Signal : What We Know and Don't Know About It After 20 Years
• Explanation of the code "6EQUJ5" on the Wow! computer printout