All language subtitles for Wow.Signal.2017.720p.WEB.h264-FaiLED

(wind gusting)

(ominous music)

- [Man 1]
Most people involved in--

- [Woman 1]
Looking for a signal--

- [Man 1] Searching for
extraterrestrial intelligence.

- [Woman 1]
From an alien civilization.

(overlapping speech
drowning each other out)

- [Man 1] Never to be explained.

(suspenseful music)

- [Robert Dixon]
Science always seeks the unknown

for answers that we
don't understand yet.

Why did Columbus sail
across the ocean?

To see what's there,

and discover other
people's or other lands.

Are we alone in the universe,

or is there really other
intelligent life out there?

- [Seth Shostak]
The question of intelligent life

is really a big question
because it goes beyond

just having biology.

It's biology that
got clever enough

to understand the universe.

- [Robert Gray] If there are
other civilizations out there

we automatically know that all

the questions of life
are answered yes.

- If we did
discover an actual signal

from an alien civilization,

it would profoundly
change human beings.

- [Seth Shostak]
This is discovery.

It isn't the kind of
science you learn about

in middle school where
you have an hypothesis

and you try and falsify.

You can't falsify
this hypothesis.

You can't prove
they're not out there.

All you can do is
discover that they are.

- [Robert Dixon]
So we have these 50 digits,

so it looks like a
bunch of random numbers.

- 6EQUJ5, that was exactly
what we were looking for.

- [Robert Gray] I don't think
many people have looked

into it in much detail.

- [Man 2] It's an intriguing
case 'cause it's a mystery.

We don't know what it was.

- [Tom Burns] It was
the strongest signal I ever saw.

An enormously powerful signal.

- It is the best
evidence that we know of,

of coming from some
other civilization.

(static hissing)

(electronic warbling)

(gentle music)

- [Narrator] Why do we search?

Mankind had always
been fascinated

by the possibility
of life beyond Earth.

The idea of other
civilizations thriving

on distant planets
captivates the imagination.

We are driven,
perhaps by the hope,

that humanity is not
alone in the universe.

And by science's promise
to always seek the unknown.

On August 15, 1977, a
massive radio telescope

operated by the Ohio
State University

detected an unusually powerful
signal from deep space.

The signal had all
the characteristics

scientists expected
in a transmission

from an intelligent
extraterrestrial source.

The event lasted for 72 seconds

and was never heard again.

Named the Wow! signal, it
was a tantalizing moment

in the search for
extraterrestrial life.

And for the relatively young
science of radio astronomy.

- [Robert Dixon] Started going
up, it went 6EQUJ5

as it faded off
to the other side.

That's a tremendously
strong signal.

We'd never seen anything
like that before.

And that told us
that this really

is a very strong
narrow band signal

that did not come from
some natural source.

- [Narrator] Most are familiar
with the traditional science

of optical, or visible
light, astronomy.

Optical telescopes
capture light rays

and magnify distant objects
for closer observation

by the human eye.

In comparison, radio astronomy
focuses on the invisible,

the radio frequency portion of
the electromagnetic spectrum.

Radio telescopes are
specialized antennas

and radio receivers that
can detect the radio waves

emanating from distant
celestial objects.

- Every object that
produces energy,

every star, every
galaxy, produces energy

all along the energy range,

which we call the
electromagnetic spectrum.

The trouble with
a visual telescope

is that it only looks at
a part of that spectrum,

why I have one right here,

that is very narrow
and a very small part.

We actually see a very
small part of the universe.

On one hand you have
the higher energies

like ultraviolet and
xrays and gamma rays.

On the lower end,
down below the red,

you have the very low
frequency energies

like infrared and radio.

This is very, very narrow.

It happens to be the
part we're interested in,

because it's the part that
we can actually detect.

So you can look at a
lot more information

about a star at the
radio end of the spectrum

than the very limited
amount of information

you get in the visual
end of the spectrum.

- [Narrator] Although
radio waves from space

were first detected
in the early 1930s,

and the first radio telescope
was built shortly thereafter,

worldwide interest in
radio astronomy escalated

in the years following
World War II.

The United States
was eager to invest

in this new branch of science.

- [Karen O'Neil] We were kind of
in the space race.

We were in this idea
that our country

wanted to be the
best in the world

in terms of science
and engineering.

We wanted to be out there
and were willing to spend,

a lot of money,
frankly, to do that.

So we spent a lot of money,
we got men on the moon,

we built telescopes,
we built a lot

of fundamental science
facilities here in the country.

And that was fantastic,

and that just led
to so many advances.

- [Michael Holstine] You know,
after World War II

there was a lot of
technological achievement,

especially in electronics

and with radar coming on
the scene and all of that.

But, you know, the
war took its toll

on most of the nations.

But for whatever reason, Europe,

especially England
and Australia,

really ramped up radio
astronomy research.

The United States didn't.

They kind of lagged behind
until about mid-50s.

Part of the reason
was that instruments

to detect radio
signals from space

are just so expensive to build.

A single university
generally can't afford

to build what you'd need
to build to be successful.

- [Narrator] As radio
astronomy continued to evolve,

a young professor of
electrical engineering

at the Ohio State University

observed its development
with keen interest.

His name was John Kraus.

In the 1930s, Kraus followed
scientist Karl Jansky's

historic discovery
of radio noise

flowing from the center
of the Milky Way galaxy.

He was fascinated
by the potential

for using cosmic radio waves,

rather than visible light,
to observe the universe.

- [John] In 1930,
essentially all that we knew

about the heavens had come

from what we could
see or photograph.

Karl Jansky changed all that.

A universe of radio sounds

to which mankind had been
deaf since time immemorial

now suddenly burst
forth in full chorus.

- [Narrator] During World War
II, Kraus met Grote Reber,

a radio engineer from
Wheaton, Illinois.

Reber had continued
Karl Jansky's work,

scanning the Milky Way
with a homemade receiver

and a 30-foot dish antenna
built in his backyard.

For a decade he was
the world's only

active radio astronomer,

producing the first
maps of the radio sky.

His antenna design
was the forerunner

of modern radio telescopes.

- [John] He told me
about his equipment

and observations
of the Milky Way

with a contagious enthusiasm.

If we had not been at war,

I think I would have
started building

a radio telescope then.

But it was not until
10 years later,

at the Ohio State University,

that I had a chance to do it.

- [Narrator] When John Kraus
joined the Ohio State faculty

in 1946, he invented
the helical antenna.

The unique
corkscrew-shaped design

would ultimately
find widespread use

in satellite communication.

In 1952, Kraus utilized
the new antenna design

to build his first
radio telescope.

With the help of
Ohio State students,

he constructed a 50-meter array

of helical antennas on
university farmland.

While a sky survey conducted
with the helix array

proved successful,
Kraus realized

that a much bigger
telescope was needed.

Within a few years,
he was ready to build

the massive radio telescope

that would ultimately
capture the Wow! signal.

- He had grand plans of making

the telescope 2,000 feet wide.

Money for that was
not forthcoming,

so I saw at one point
he had reduced that

to 720 feet wide, money
was not forthcoming,

so he reduced it
to 360 feet wide

for the paraboloid.

- [Narrator] In 1956, John
Kraus negotiated an agreement

to utilize a 20-acre site owned

by Ohio Wesleyan University.

The property was dedicated for

the construction and operation

of the Ohio State University
Radio Observatory.

This large radio telescope,
designed to listen

for signals in deep space,

was appropriately
nicknamed the Big Ear.

With a grant from the
National Science Foundation,

Kraus began construction on
the Big Ear in late 1956.

Under his supervision,
university students

did much of the
construction work.

Ultimately, the process
took five years.

- When John Kraus got the
money to build the place

he didn't have very much money,

so between 1956 and
1963 they constructed

this gigantic thing, as big
as three football fields,

with the use mostly
of volunteer helpers

and graduate students,
so it took a long time.

- [Robert Dixon] The design
of Big Ear was intended

to make it the most
sensitive telescope

for the least amount of money.

And it was John Kraus'
original design that did that.

- [Jerry Ehman] There's only one
other telescope in the world

that was built like it

and that was in
France, Nancay, France.

- [Robert Dixon]
And if you can imagine here,

a large flat surface
of aluminum foil

three acres in extent.

At one ends was a curved
parabolic reflector

standing on the ground.

On the other end
was a flat surface,

tilted up like this,

which could be
tilted up and down.

And out in the middle
of the ground plain

there was some things
that we call feed horns

that look like scoops,

which were pointed toward
the parabolic part,

and they scooped
up the radio waves.

Signals came down from the sky,

they bounced off
this flat reflector,

traveled horizontally across
this big field of aluminum

to the parabolic reflector.

Which focused them down
to these scoop-like horns

sitting in the middle
of the ground plain.

- [Narrator] Unlike
today's parabolic dish antennas,

the Big Ear could not be
electronically controlled

to pan the sky on demand.

Rather, it depended on
the rotation of the Earth.

- [Robert Dixon]
The telescope could not steer
in the left-right direction.

You could only steer in
the up and down direction.

But that's okay, because we
can center a certain angle

and then allow
the Earth to turn.

And as the Earth turned,
then the beam was swept up,

a little strip all
around the whole sky

in 24 hours as the Earth turned.

And we'd sit there
for a couple days

and then we'd change
the angle slightly

and cover another little stripe

all around the
whole sky like that.

So in that way we could
cover the whole sky.

- [Narrator] When completed
in the early 1960s,

the Big Ear was
one of the world's

largest radio telescopes.

It was designed to be a
versatile survey instrument,

capable of observing large
sections of the radio sky.

- [Tom Burns]
When it was finally built,

using its old computer
with 16K of memory

to help collect the data,

they managed for
the next 10 years

to do a map of the
entire visible sky.

- [Robert Dixon] I came here
in 1963 as a graduate student

working for
Professor John Kraus.

I was placed in charge
of analyzing the data

coming from our radio telescope,

which had just gone on the air.

We were looking for natural
sources of radio signals,

not intelligent sources.

That's why the
telescope was built.

This was in the early
days of radio astronomy.

When we were just really
getting established

as a mainstream science.

And there have not
been any big survey

of the entire sky to discover

all the radio signals
that were there.

People had used dish antennas.

They've used antennas like that

to look at certain
stars, certain galaxies,

and study them in detail.

But nobody had
searched the whole sky.

So we were like the
pioneer explorers.

And we created this huge
catalog of 20,000 objects

and we published huge maps

showing what the sky looked
like to the radio telescope.

- They discovered
objects like quasars

and observed them,
which at the time

were the most distant objects

ever observed by any telescope.

One of the quasars,
for instance,

was about 12 billion
light years away,

which we now know is
considerably far back,

almost to the beginning

of the creation of the
universe in the Big Bang.

- They discovered
20,000 radio sources.

Only 10,000 were
known at the time.

So it was a big deal,

a big contribution to

what was known in
radio astronomy.

- You guys want to
go down to the scope?

- [Deana] Yeah, we going up?

- Yeah, you want to.

- I guess.

I've got the right shoes.
- [Michael Holstine]
Your shoes are all right?

Y'all can all ride in
the back. (chuckles)

(truck engine revving)

(gentle music)

- [Woman 2]
Why do we search for E.T.?

Ever since the beginning
of human history

we've always looked out
to what's out there.

- [Michael Holstine]
The Green Bank Observatory
is important to this area.

It's one of the premier
science facilities

in the state of West Virginia.

And as far as radio
astronomy goes,

it's one of the premier
observatories in the world.

You know, it's a treasure.

- [Narrator] Nestled deep in
the hills of West Virginia,

the Green Bank
Observatory is home

to the world's largest, fully
steerable radio telescope.

The site hosts eight
radio telescopes

and more than 60 years
of scientific discovery.

Like the Big Ear
telescope in Ohio,

the Green Bank story
began in the late 1950s.

America's interest in radio
astronomy was growing.

The Green Bank site
was chosen for building

the first National Radio
Astronomy Observatory

in the United States.

- [Karen O'Neil]
If you look back historically,

coming out of World
War II in particular,

there was a lot of
interest in radio waves

and radio technology, and
of course the beginnings

of radio astronomy got started.

So people started
listening to the cosmos,

listening to the sky.

And if you move forward
up into the 1950s,

late 1950s by then, you had,

radio astronomy was
an actual science.

There was places
around the world

that were studying
radio astronomy.

Certainly if you look
over to Europe and Asia,

Russia was already
building significant

radio telescopes at the time.

The Netherlands was
already building

significant radio telescopes.

And other countries were
starting to look at it.

Within this country,
although radio astronomy

was acknowledged as
a field of science,

there wasn't any
significant radio telescope

that the astronomers could use.

Instead there was a lot
of fantastic instruments,

but kind of built in
people's backyards,

built in people's laboratories.

- So in 1956, they started
searching for a place

to put this new National
Radio Astronomy Observatory.

And there were a
lot of criteria.

I mean, radio astronomy's
a very sensitive science.

The signals are very weak.

So you had to look for a place

that didn't have
a lot of people.

You know, people are noisy.

And they build things
that are noisy.

Especially in the
radio spectrum.

So they wanted a
low population area.

They wanted it to be
free of things like

overhead high-tension
power lines,

because those things
can create noise.

And several other criteria that,

scientific staff
sort of short listed

to about 29 sites up
and down the east coast.

And it turned out that
Green Bank, West Virginia

was the ideal, or
most ideal, place.

So in 1957 the Green
Bank site was dedicated

and we started
building telescopes.

- [Narrator] As
telescopes began to rise

from the ground up, the
advantages of having

a National Radio
Astronomy Observatory

in rural West Virginia
quickly became apparent.

Green Bank soon attracted
professional radio astronomers,

including those interested
in a new subset of astronomy,

the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence,

also known as SETI.

- The reason a lot of
astronomers came here

in the early years of NRAO

is, first of all
we were building

the biggest and the best
instruments in the world.

And we were pushing the
boundaries of what we knew

radio telescope's
could accomplish

and radio receivers
could accomplish.

- [Karen O'Neil] One of the best
things that happened

when the idea of a National
Radio Astronomy Observatory

was first decided, was this idea

of radio quiet zones.

So now you have a piece of land

that's beginning to build
a lot of radio telescopes

and you have legal
guarantees around it

that you're not gonna
see a lot of noise

like you would anywhere else

that might build
a radio telescope.

As soon as you have
those two pieces,

you have a very obvious
location to come

if you want to go look for
weird signals, frankly.

You don't want to
do that someplace

where there might be
a lot of other noise

you have to find it through.

And so the existence

of a National Radio
Astronomy Observatory

combined with the radio
quiet zones around here

made this a perfect
place for a lot

of radio astronomers to come,

including Frank Drake
and many of the other

pioneers of radio
astronomy in this country.

- [Narrator] Dr. Frank
Drake, a radio astronomer

regarded as the
father of modern SETI,

was a young staff astronomer
at Green Bank in 1960.

He devised an experiment
using interstellar radio waves

to search for signs
of intelligent life
on distant planets.

Drake called his
experiment Project Ozma.

Conducted with one of Green
Bank's 85-foot telescopes,

it was the first modern search

for extraterrestrial
intelligence.

- It was an experiment to
literally go out and listen.

Let's go see if we can find

signals from another
intelligent life out there.

So it's in this particular case,

Project Ozma was
using radio waves,

so the same type of
technology we use today

with the Breakthrough
Listen project.

Frank had to spend many,
many hours per star

to just look, to get
the level of sensitivity

he thought he would need
in order to see a signal.

He pieced all that
together to just see

for the first time ever,

let's just go take a measurement

in the very scientific
manner to see if we can see

a signal from alien life.

Obviously he didn't
see anything.

If he did, this would
be a very different

conversation we're having.

- [Ellie White]
So this is the Drake Lounge,

you can see it's furnished
1960s decor all the way.

All the original
furnishings and decorations.

So it looks basically exactly
as it did back in 1960

when Frank Drake and all
his colleagues gathered here

to discuss the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence.

Frank Drake was not the
only famous scientist here,

there were famous scientists

from Carl Sagan to
Philip Morrison.

So the fun thing we
always try and do

is say, "Hey, which chair
did Carl Sagan sit in?"

So it's sort of neat
history about this place.

- [Narrator] In 1961,
following his experience

with Project Ozma,
Frank Drake organized

a meeting at Green Bank
to discuss the possibility

of searching for intelligent
extraterrestrial life.

In preparation for this meeting

he created an equation
that laid the groundwork

for a meaningful scientific
dialogue about finding E.T.

It became known as
the Drake Equation.

- [Ellie White] At that time
there were very few people
in the world

who were interested
in the search

for extraterrestrial
intelligence.

So Frank Drake
being one of them,

he started thinking about
what are all the factors

that influence the
probability of life elsewhere.

So he was starting
to think about things

like star formation and
exoplanets per star,

and things like that.

So he thought, "Well,
this actually fits

"into the form of an equation."

- [Karen O'Neil] He just started
writing these factors down

and saying, "This is
what it's gonna take."

We have to know,
well we have to know

a whole lot of things,
but we have to know about

how many planets
are there out there

in the universe, for example.

Of those planets, how many
could actually sustain life?

And you have to piece all
of these factors together

and it makes an equation.

An absolutely beautiful and
fairly timeless equation

which is the Drake Equation.

What's been amazing
about the Drake Equation

is certainly you can
take a look at it now,

many, many years later,

it's really still the
equation that you need

in order to look and say

what is the probability
of finding this?

- [Ellie White]
L is the lifetime of
a communicating civilization.

We only have one example of such

a communicating
civilization, and that's us.

So people try and estimate
how long do you think

a civilization like
ourselves would last.

Would it last 50 years,
100 years, 500 years,

a million years, you know
that sort of determines

how many civilizations
you're going to detect.

Because the longer
they're out there

the longer they're communicating

and the more likely it is that
you'll detect their signals.

(gentle music)

- [Michael Holstine] What Frank
did was consider a way

to theorize the potential
for the existence

of an extraterrestrial
civilization.

A lot of his numbers, a
lot of his assumptions,

we're sort of
proving were correct,

or very close to being correct.

So that narrows the
guesstimate factor

down to a more
knowing true figure.

You're still talking about
100,000 potential sites

that you have to look
at in this huge galaxy.

Still becomes a daunting task.

- [Nichol Cunningham] SETI's
always been about good science.

They have to make assumptions

about what they're looking for.

That's, you know, a really
difficult thing to do

when you don't know
what you're looking for.

They've always been trying to do

the best science they
can with the equipment

and telescopes and
things that they have.

- [Karen O'Neil]
SETI is such an integral part

of the history of
Green Bank Observatory

that you can't come
here as an astronomer

and spend any time
and not start hearing

not just about what's happened
here on site with SETI,

but also what's happened
just around the country

and around the world with SETI.

Including things like
the Big Ear telescope,

Wow! signal, and
all of those types

of studies that have been done.

(lawn mower engine humming)

- [Tom Burns] This would be
some of the radio equipment

that they use to
modulate the data,

to collect that data.

With a radio, essentially
what we might call a radio,

except that it monitors
many frequencies

at the same time,
and just for fun,

if you wanna modulate
some of that information

and put it on a screen, you
can use an oscilloscope.

That's why old science
fiction movies look so great,

because they have those
oscilloscopes running.

- [Narrator] From 1963
until the early 1970s,

Ohio State's Big Ear
telescope conducted a survey

that covered 70%
of the entire sky.

Their comprehensive
Ohio All Sky Survey

produced detailed
maps of the radio sky

that proved useful
to astronomers
throughout the world.

But by 1972, budget
shortages forced

the National Science Foundation

to terminate funding
for the Big Ear.

That decision closed one
highly successful chapter

in the Big Ear's history,
and began another.

- [Robert Gray] In the early 70s
they ran out of money.

The National Science Foundation
stopped funding them.

New areas of astronomy and new
telescopes were being built

and that's when Bob Dixon
put in a new receiver,

better suited to finding
the narrow band signals

that people think
might be out there

if other civilizations
are broadcasting at us.

- [Narrator] In 1971,
Bob Dixon attended

a large gathering of
scientists and engineers

at NASA's Ames Research Center
in Mountain View, California.

The group shared ideas
about the possibility

of detecting signals from
extraterrestrial civilizations.

Their findings were published

in a report titled
"Project Cyclops".

The goal of Cyclops was to
assess what it would take

to mount a large search
for radio signals

from interstellar civilizations.

Widely circulated by NASA,

the final Cyclops report
strongly influenced

the development
of a SETI program

at the Big Ear
Radio Observatory.

- [Robert Dixon] I became very
interested in SETI at the time.

Finding for the radio
observatory nationally was lost.

We realized we have a
wonderful radio telescope here,

and this would be a wonderful
purpose to put it toward

as the first large
telescope dedicated

to searching for
extraterrestrial life.

We have a perfectly
good staff of people

who would be willing
to volunteer,

and we attracted
more volunteers.

- I was actually a volunteer

at the Ohio State University
radio observatory.

My job was as a
radio astronomer.

Specifically looking at
the computer printouts

from the radio telescope.

- So we had the equipment
and we had the people.

And we reconfigured some things

and we put it together.

And we started that search.

- [Narrator] Unlike
the All Sky Survey,

which had utilized
wide band radio waves

to search for naturally
occurring signals,

the Big Ear SETI
program demanded

a much more narrow focus.

- Natural signals,
they sound the same

no matter where you
tune your radio.

If you had like your AM radio,

it would sound the same
hissing sound no matter what.

On the other hand, an
intelligent signal, we believe,

would be tuned in only
at one point on the dial.

And that's what we're looking
for, a narrow band signal.

Narrow band signals
are artificial.

There are not very
many things in nature

that make narrow band signals.

- [Narrator] The
Big Ear SETI program

began in December 1973.

With no external funding
and a volunteer staff,

the program and equipment
were set up to operate

with as few people as possible.

In just a few years,
the Big Ear would make

one of the most
intriguing discoveries

in the search for intelligent
extraterrestrial life.

A signal that
continues to fascinate.

(suspenseful music)

(static crackling)

(printer clicking)

(suspenseful music)

- [Robert Gray]
From what I've been told,

the Wow! signal was a
signal that came in,

lasted for 72 seconds.

And it looks to me like a
radio source, like a real one.

- [Narrator] On the evening
of August 15th, 1977,

the Big Ear
telescope was engaged

in its on-going mission,

the search for narrow
band radio signals.

With its flat reflector set
at a predetermined angle,

the Big Ear's beam
rotated with the Earth,

patiently scanning a continuous
strip of the night sky.

Incoming radio waves
were automatically

processed by computer.

Computer printouts provided
a chronological record

of the alphanumeric
date for later analysis.

- [Jerry Ehman] When we set up
the receivers and the computers,

we did it with a purpose
of not having to have

a large group of
people maneuver data

and do various things,

because that was time
consuming, costly, and so forth.

We built everything into the
receiver and the computer

to do things on their own.

- [Robert Dixon] We had, at that
time, a 50 channel receiver.

So we have 50
different receivers.

You can imagine having 50
radios sitting on your counter,

each one tuned to a slightly
different frequency.

And the output of all those 50

was going into the computer
we had at the time.

And we had written programs
to record, carefully,

each of those 50 signals.

And the intensity
of each of those

was then printed out
on a sheet of paper.

Channels one through 50
running across the paper.

- [Narrator] Shortly
after 11 p.m., the Big Ear

registered a signal
many times stronger

than the normal
levels of radio noise.

The signal lasted for 72
seconds, rising and falling

as it passed through
the Big Ear's beam.

No one was present
to witness the event,

but the computer system recorded

the sudden escalation
in signal strength.

And the data printout
clearly showed

the tremendous
spike in intensity.

The moment passed,
and Big Ear continued

scanning the sky
throughout the night.

- There's nobody there,
typically, to look at it.

And then at that
time, the computer,

after it printed everything out,

would be taken off
to Jerry's house

and he'd look at it,
and he'd look through it

and see what he could find.

- [Jerry Ehman] Computer records
were delivered to my home every,

oh about two times a week.

A printout that contained three

or four days worth
of observations.

- [Tom Burns] What you get
when you're looking at data

from a radio telescope
is just a big ream

of paper with numbers on it

representing what the signals
were at various frequencies.

- [Jerry Ehman] When I would get
home from teaching,

or at night after supper,

I would sit down with
the computer printout

and start to look for
anything interesting.

The data that included
August 15, 1977,

and two or three days past that.

Just a few pages into that

I saw the pattern 6EQUJ5.

And I saw, okay the
numbers are increasing,

hitting a peak, and
then dropping off.

That's exactly what we expect

for a strong narrow band signal.

- [Narrator] Since
its discovery, there
has been a popular

notion that the Wow! signal
can somehow be decoded.

That its alphanumeric sequence

harbors some hidden
meaning or message.

In truth, the use of
numbers and letters

was a practical method for
describing the intensity

of radio signals
observed by the Big Ear.

The computer printouts generated

by the Big Ear
featured 50 columns,

one for every channel
being monitored.

Each column had room
for a single digit.

Low intensity signals
were assigned a one.

Stronger signals were
assigned a higher number.

Because the printout
columns were limited

to single digits, signals
stronger than a nine

were assigned a letter value.

A 10 became A, 11,
became B, and so on.

This simple method
clearly demonstrated

the intensity of
the Wow! signal.

In purely numerical terms,

the Wow! signal
was 30 times higher

than the lowest levels
of random radio noise.

- We were trying to
think of how could this

be a fluke of some kind?

It's the biggest
thing we ever saw.

- [Jerry Ehman]
Within 10 seconds or less,

with my red pen I
circled the 6EQUJ5

and wrote the word
wow, exclamation point.

And it's fortunate, I got to
thinking about this later,

that wow is kind of
like an expletive,

but a good expletive and so
it didn't have to be deleted.

- [Robert Gray] In searching
for E.T., the Wow! signal

is the best candidate
that's ever been seen.

- [Seth Shostak] The thing about
the Wow! signal is that it had

the characteristic shape,

the change of
intensity with time,

followed what you would expect

from some transmitter
that's up there

in the sky moving
with the stars.

That's what made
it so appealing,

so different from the kind of

normal interference
that you get.

- [Narrator] Amazed by the
Wow! signal's intensity,

Jerry Ehman continued reviewing
the computer printouts

from the night of August 15th,

and the days immediately after.

He was searching for evidence

that the incredibly strong
signal had repeated.

- [Jerry Ehman] I was especially
interested to see

if that same signal
came back a day later,

which would mean in the
same position in the sky.

It didn't.

It didn't appear on the
third or fourth days, either.

After I got through looking
at all the printouts,

I called Dr. John
Kraus and said,

"We've got something
interesting here."

- [Narrator] The Wow! signal
presented many questions.

Was it a natural
celestial phenomenon?

Could it have been
a man-made signal

from a passing satellite?

Was it an artificial
signal from an intelligent,

extraterrestrial civilization?

John Kraus, director of the
Ohio State Radio Observatory,

and his assistant
director, Bob Dixon,

immediately began to investigate

and eliminate the possibilities.

- [Robert Dixon]
This is the scientific method.

To discover something
extraordinary

you need extraordinary proof.

And so we wanted to eliminate
everything else we could.

And now interference
is the common situation

with radio astronomers.

But we have interference
all the time

to the radio telescope,
but we know what it is,

we recognize it, we've
done it for so long.

We recognize it for what it is.

And the characteristics
of local interference,

say coming from the Earth,
is totally different.

Interference pulses on and off,

it'll look like little
static jumping up and down.

Never does it follow the curve

of the radio
telescope like that.

Because what that means is
the telescope was scanning

across that area in the sky

and it went across whatever
was sending that signal

and it went back down.

It followed exactly
the theoretical curve

that it should
follow for the shape

of the antenna pattern
of the telescope.

That's another astounding
piece of evidence.

- [Jerry Ehman] Dr. Kraus did
the bulk of the investigation

as to what it could be.

He looked at stars,
galaxies, planets,

satellites, and anything else

that could have sent the signal.

And didn't find anything.

- [Robert Dixon]
Is it equipment malfunction?

No, we ruled that out.

Is it some planet or
star or something, no.

I mean, one could
say it might be

an Earth satellite
of some kind, but,

the strikes are against that.

Because we're using a
frequency that's protected

internationally for
any transmitter.

Nobody's allowed
to transmit there,

it's reserved for
scientific research.

So for a satellite to
be transmitting there

they'd have to be
disobeying that rule.

But the fact is, if
it's a satellite,

it has to be moving in the sky.

It would have to be moving
at exactly the right rate,

and that's just really
not very practical

to think about that.

Is it a hoax?

Well, Jerry and I
are the only ones

that could have pulled this hoax

by fiddling around with
the computer program,

and I know I didn't do it,

and I'm pretty
sure he didn't do.

So we knew that it was there.

- [Narrator] The Big
Ear continued to search

the same section
of sky for 30 days

following the Wow!
signal discovery.

Eventually, it
scanned the area again

for 70 more days.

The signal never reappeared.

- [Robert Dixon] And what was
even more puzzling is,

we actually had two beams
in the sky at the time.

Slightly, a few minutes
apart from each other.

And when it went through
one beam, we saw it,

and it went through the
other beam, we didn't see it.

So that means that
the signal turned off

at the time we
we're looking at it,

and that's even more exciting.

Because no natural signal
would have done that.

- [Narrator] The Big
Ear design featured

two large feed horns,
situated side-by-side

near one end of the telescope's
aluminum ground plane.

The dual horns acted as
funnels for the radio waves

bouncing off the
parabolic reflector.

Essentially giving
the Big Ear two beams

for observing and
capturing data.

After passing through one beam,

a radio wave would be
picked up in the second beam

a few minutes later.

The Wow! signal's failure
to appear in the second beam

did cause excitement.

It also caused ambiguity.

- If we were to pick up
the Wow! signal today,

you would be able to, at least
with some SETI experiments,

you would be able to follow
up right away, right away.

You would immediately
start looking at it again.

Now, you could say, "Yes, but
they did that at Ohio State."

They did, they followed up
with one more observation.

That was an automatic feature

of the antenna they were using.

So two minutes after
they find Wow! signal

they looked at it
again, and that's it.

But of course, today you
would keep looking at it,

keep looking at it,
keep looking at it

for minutes and minutes
and minutes and minutes,

and if you didn't
find it you would say

it's probably interference.

- [Narrator] In the years
since its discovery,

the Wow! signal has been
recognized worldwide

as a significant event
in the search for E.T.

Many still believe it's
the best evidence to date

of a communication
from an intelligent

extraterrestrial source.

Others question its
scientific validity.

- [Seth Shostak] The Wow!
signal certainly was
a strong signal, right,

there was no doubt about
a signal being there.

That's the not question.

The question isn't
was there a signal,

the question is where did
that signal come from?

Did it really come
from outer space?

Did it come from
something artificial?

Did it come from
something natural?

Did it come from the Earth?

And of course nobody knows.

- [Scott Gaudi]
It remains unexplained.

It was a highly
significant signal

that was unexpected and
difficult to explain

by natural phenomenon,
but it was never repeated.

It could never be verified.

And so we're left, really
not knowing what caused it.

You could imagine if an
extraterrestrial civilization

was intentionally
trying to contact us

they wouldn't just
send us one signal

and then leave us
hanging for, you know,

many years wondering
what that signal meant.

(wind rushing)

- [Robert Gray] This is a movie
of the galaxy M33.

This came from the VLA
in January of this year.

What I'm looking for
here is a big colored dot

that's not always there,

that's only at one radio
picture at one frequency.

Which might be a radio signal

pointed our way
from the galaxy M33.

No one's ever looked
at this before.

No one's ever seen this
little movie I'm playing.

This is what I call the
small SETI radio telescope

I built in the early 1980's.

And this displays the direction
the antenna's pointing,

and this actually
controls the antenna.

So this 12-foot
dish that's feeding

electrical signals into this

is being pointed
around by a 1944

surplus military radar pedestal.

- [Interviewer] Where's the
dish that you use with this?

- Well, the dish is outside.

Watch your step a little bit.

(gentle music)

[Robert Gray] I first heard
about the Ohio State Wow! signal

when I read an article about
it in Cosmic Search magazine.

A small radio astronomy magazine

being published by John Kraus,
the founder and designer

of the Ohio State
radio telescope.

He wrote an article that
described this unusual

and intriguing signal
they discovered in 1977.

I was a data analyst,
a computer jockey,

programmer at the time.

This seemed so intriguing to me

that I called the
people at Ohio State,

called Bob Dixon I believe.

Somewhat to my surprise,
he didn't reject

when I suggested I'd
visit Columbus, Ohio,

then look at the radio
telescope and data personally.

Everything I heard
about the Wow! signal

seemed more and
more intriguing and,

more and more likely to be
a real signal from the stars

rather than interference.

(suspenseful music)

- [Narrator] Since
the early 1980s,

Robert Gray has been
searching for the Wow! signal.

Like Grote Reber
several decades earlier,

Gray searched the sky using
his home brewed equipment

and 12-foot dish antenna
stationed in his backyard.

Along with writing
"The Elusive Wow",

which chronicles his searches,

Gray has hunted the
Wow! signal at the

Harvard Smithsonian
Astrophysical Observatory

in Massachusetts,
the Very Large Array

in Socorro, New Mexico,

and the Mount Pleasant
Radio Observatory

at the University of Tasmania.

- [Robert Gray] The Ohio State
Wow! signal was only seen once.

It was present for six
10-second measurements,

so it wasn't just a quick flash.

But it wasn't seen
twice for 72 seconds

like a constant celestial
source should be.

This is a flaw in
the Wow! signal,

that it was only
seen in one beam.

- [Narrator] Some astronomers
believe the Wow! signal

appeared in only one
of the Big Ear's beams

because it was
man-made interference,

or perhaps some sort
of natural anomaly.

But an opposing
school of thought

suggests another possibility.

A radio signal
from an intelligent
extraterrestrial source

might appear intermittently.

- [Robert Gray] It's possible
that the Wow! signal

didn't show up in
the second horn

because it was some
kind of sweeping signal,

like a cat's eye
beam of a transmitter

that was sweeping across the sky

and swept across
the Ohio State beam

in merely a few minutes.

Most people involved
in searching

for extraterrestrial
intelligence

have one of two
scenarios in mind.

One, is a beacon that's
shining all the time,

so anytime we happen to look
at a certain spot in the sky

we'll see it, if we're tuned
to the right frequency.

That's a terribly
expensive thing to do.

The amount of power is way more

than all the power
on Earth to operate

a beacon that shines in all
directions all the time.

The other scenario
is a big antenna

that points our
way every so often.

A directed beam, and that
uses a lot less power.

That's the reason why big
radio telescopes are so big

is that they see a
smaller spot in the sky.

And for a transmitter
that means that they're

only shooting the power towards
a small spot in the sky,

so you'd need a lot less power.

The drawback to a directed
antenna pointing at us

is it's probably not gonna be
pointing at us all the time.

That's another
possible explanation

for something like the Wow!
signal being intermittent.

- [Narrator] Despite
his continued searches

and long-term effort,
Gray has not been able

to find the Wow! signal again.

- As far as I can
tell, having talked

to nearly everyone in the field,

no one else has
ever looked for it.

No one except for me has
tried to follow up on it.

And my observations
are admittedly those

of a non-professional
and might very well

have had some flaws.

The professional
astronomical community

has never really looked
hard for this thing.

It might be worth doing so.

(waves splashing)
(car engines rumbling)

- [Woman 3]
Times she has a happy--
- [Woman 4] Not that I heard.

- [Seth Shostak] People will ask
me at parties,

when they hear what
kind of work I do,

they say, "Well, are you close?"

I don't know what that
means, are you close.

Because until you've found a
signal that you can verify,

and that is clearly
extraterrestrial in origin,

you've not had any close calls,

you've not had any successes,

you've been looking,
looking, looking.

It's like, you know, Captain
Cook in the South Pacific

in the 1770s, right.

Every day he just sees
more water around the ship.

And so, "Well, are you close?"

Well, he doesn't know
whether he's close.

- [Narrator] As a
senior astronomer for
the SETI Institute,

Seth Shostak has been
an active participant

in the institute's SETI
observing programs.

He has written and
lectured extensively

about the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence,

including the Wow! signal.

- [Seth Shostak]
The Wow! signal, of course,
continues to intrigue people,

and maybe people think
that it's our best case

for a signal from
extraterrestrial intelligence.

I find that maybe a little
bit, I don't know, overstated.

To say it's our best case.

It's an intriguing case
'cause it's a mystery.

We don't know what it was.

But then again, if you
look back into that era,

in the late 1970s,
there were other

SETI experiments
running as well.

And they would come up with
mysterious signals, as well.

They would come up with signals
that were seen only once.

And that had the
hallmarks of the kind

of signal you're looking for.

But they didn't have the
great name, Wow! signal.

They were just sort
of anonymous signals

coming from a certain
spot on the sky.

I've written occasionally
about a signal

that we picked up in
1997, which was the,

to my mind, the most
interesting candidate signal

that we've ever gotten.

And for most of the
day it looked like
it was the real deal.

Turned out it wasn't, it was due

to a solar research satellite,

a European solar
research satellite.

SOHO was the name
of the satellite.

But for about 16 hours
or so we weren't sure,

we thought it might
be the real deal.

And that was actually a
very interesting event.

It was a good thing it
happened, in my mind,

because it showed
us what happens

if you actually pick up a signal

that is what you're looking for.

The Wow! signal may be
a case of the triumph

of branding over
product, perhaps.

- [Narrator] Whether it's
the best case of a signal

from E.T., or an unintentional
triumph of branding,

the Wow! signal may be the
most widely recognized event

in SETI's short history.

In the years since
the Wow! discovery

SETI experiments have continued,

benefiting greatly from
advancements in technology

and more sophisticated
search techniques.

Still, there are those who feel

we have barely
scratched the surface.

- [Robert Gray] It's hard
to describe how modest

our searches have been so far.

We've typically only
looked for a minute or two

in any one direction
and any one frequency.

It's entirely
possible that there's

beamed transmissions pointed
at us from other stars,

that if we happen to
point a big antenna

in the right direction,

tuned to the right
frequency, we would hear.

We simply haven't conducted
a long enough search yet,

at enough different frequencies

to even know if that's possible.

- [Seth Shostak]
Most SETI experiments you spend
very little time

looking at any given direction

at any given spot
on the radio dial.

Seconds, minutes,
no more than that.

And you might say well
that doesn't sound

like a very good strategy.

Maybe they do broadcast
in our direction,

but only once a day or
once a week or once a year,

you're gonna miss
'em, most likely.

And that's true.

But if you're doing
this experiment

you have to decide what's
the better strategy.

Are you gonna use that
time to just keep looking

in the same direction
at the same frequencies

or are you going to look
at another star system?

It could be that somebody
is not incessantly

targeting the Earth,
'cause after all,

they probably don't know that
homo sapiens is here, right.

Unless they're
within 70 light years

they haven't picked
up the kind of radar

or FM radio or
television signals

that would betray our presence.

They know there's life on Earth

because of the oxygen
in our atmosphere,

but they don't know
that there's any

intelligent life, so you know,

how much money would you spend

to relentlessly target some
other planet with a signal

if all you knew was
that it had biology.

Maybe all it's got is microbes.

That's the situation
that obtained here

for a couple of billion
years, so you know.

Maybe you don't spend
a lot of money there,

but maybe what you do
is you have a long list

of all the planets
that you know have life

and you just target
them all sequentially,

you give them a
quick ping, right.

You give them a ping
and then you come back

two weeks later and
you ping them again,

or maybe two years later
or 200 years later.

And you just ping
them occasionally

and see if anything happens.

And you know, the Wow! signal
could have been a ping,

that's certainly a suggestion.

That's just one possibility,
there are many possibilities.

And unfortunately that
doesn't turn it into science

until you can prove that
one of them is true.

- [Narrator] Scientific
opinions continue to differ

about the origin
of the Wow! signal.

Even with the controversy, it
remains an extraordinary event

in the broader search for
extraterrestrial intelligence.

- I think probably the
majority of astronomers

think that it was just some
naturally occurring phenomenon

that just happened once.

We're left really not
knowing what caused it.

We can't really be
sure that it was

an extraterrestrial
civilization.

SETI's based on the presumption

that we are not the only
civilized society in the galaxy,

and that there are civilized
societies in the galaxy

that are willing and able
to communicate with us.

There are two primary
paths by which

we are looking for
life in the universe.

One is a systematic,
more scientific path.

The first step that you
might want to know is,

well, are there planets
around other stars at all?

Then if you know that
there are planets

around other stars, the next
thing you might wanna ask is,

well do those planetary systems

look anything like our own.

Once we find some
solar systems like ours

then what we really
want to look for

are planets like the
Earth, pale blue dots.

So those are rocky planets
with thin atmospheres

located at the right distance
from their parent star

where they can have liquid
water on the surface.

And that's a lot of the way
in which we go about science,

is we take one step at a time.

We build upon previous
advances in knowledge

till we ultimately get to the
final question that we want.

SETI, on the other hand, is
kinda like taking a novel

and going back to
the last chapter

and reading that and
finding out what happens.

It's kind of cheating,
in some sense,

it's not going through
the whole book.

So you're just trying
to look directly

for intelligent
civilizations immediately,

without having to go through
all the systematic process

of leading to the
discovery of life.

The opinions of
SETI and scientists

that are searching
for life range from

it's a crazy thing to do to
it's a reasonable thing to do.

- [Robert Dixon] SETI
is only for patient people.

Because you can
search a lifetime and
never find anything,

but it's still so
interesting and important

that you always do it.

So that's why people
like Jerry and I

get involved in doing
things like this.

The big danger in SETI is
called anthropomorphism.

Looking at things from
the viewpoint of man,

because that's the
only way we can.

We try not to think
about specific signals,

but look at general signals
which are narrow band,

which would be characteristic
of any such signals.

- [Michael Holstine]
I think that the Wow! signal,

even though it
couldn't be identified,

couldn't be verified,

was a kickstart to
the continued search

for extraterrestrial
intelligence.

I mean you think about
even a young scientist,

a young astronomer,
who is trying to decide

what his path or
what her path may be,

you read something
about the Wow! Signal

and it gives you a
whole new door to open.

It gives you
another possibility.

- We're looking for something
that we don't know

is there or if we're gonna
ever be able to detect it.

And that's a difficult
thing to justify.

But it's also potentially
one of the most

important questions we
ever want to answer.

So you have this
balance of something

that's very high risk,
but very high gain.

- [Michael Holstine]
The search for extraterrestrial
intelligence,

I think it's fair to
say to some extent

has had a stigma
associated with it.

(dramatic music)

- [Nichol Cunningham]
The perception of SETI
is the UFOs and sightings.

That little green
man with big eyes.

And it's been
potentially difficult

to shake off that association.

- [Scott Gaudi] There's
an entire culture of people

that believe in UFOs,
and that we have in fact

been contacted by
aliens many, many times.

- [Karen O'Neil] Of course
there's a lot of excitement

around the idea of
aliens, of SETI,

of any of that, because,

how could it not be
just incredibly exciting

to think that there is
some other race out there,

some other very
exotic type of race

out there in the universe,
and the idea that hey,

we'll be able to
interact with them

is just really, really enticing
and really, really exciting.

- [Tom Burns] We get a lot
of UFO reports at Perkins,

in one form or another.

And I have to say,

it's always, always,
always some natural event.

There was one thing
that I saw one time

I had no idea what it was.

These beautiful
white points of light

darting around, darting around.

They were just a
whole lot of them.

So I got in my car and I
drove toward it, what was it?

It was a bunch of seagulls
dancing around a billboard.

The billboard lights
tend to point up

and it was the lights
reflecting off their stomachs.

Thought I had it,
but it was seagulls.

- [Michael Holstine]
The sensationalism that
surrounds SETI research

can be pretty amazing,

and Green Bank has
not been immune to it.

When a 300-foot telescope
collapsed in 1988

there were, albeit tabloid,

newspaper headlines that said

"Aliens destroy radio
telescope in Green Bank".

That's just proof of
the need for people

to think about the fantastical.

To be exposed to
the fantastical.

- If somebody could come
up with one thing one time,

that they could describe to me

that I couldn't figure
out what it was,

then I might be more interested
in this kind of thing.

(gentle music)

- [Karen O'Neil] Human beings
love to wonder why.

Are there beings out
there in the universe

is just so tantalizing,
so exciting to think

there's something else out
there, we're not alone.

- [Scott Gaudi] As a skeptic,
as a scientist I'm a skeptic,

and as a skeptic
I have to say that

I don't believe there's been
any real definitive evidence

of extraterrestrial
life contacting us.

Of course which
begs the question,

does that mean that
such life is rare?

A lot of people are familiar
with the Fermi paradox

which simply put is if
intelligent life is out there,

where are they, why
haven't they contacted us.

There are various solutions
to this apparent paradox,

but one of them is simply that

there is no other
intelligent life out there,

that we are the only
intelligent life in our galaxy.

If I were a betting man,
and I'm not, but if I were,

I would bet that simple life
is probably fairly common

and we will probably find
it, maybe not in my lifetime,

but certainly within the
next few hundred years.

- [Seth Shostak]
One of the problems with SETI

is that you can't
guarantee success.

If you decide that
as a young astronomer

you're gonna go
study exoplanets,

you can be sure
you're gonna find some

and you're gonna
learn something new.

You can't miss, we've found
thousands of exoplanets.

So, of course, you're
gonna find some.

With SETI, there's no guarantee.

It may be that
you spend decades,

maybe this take centuries,
maybe more, who knows,

to find something.

And all that time you
didn't find anything.

And you gotta be
able to take that.

You gotta be able to say
look, I'm down with that.

I can handle that.

- [Michael Holstine]
I personally feel that it is
entirely possible

that we will discover
life beyond our own.

Can I definitively say
that it's gonna happen

in my lifetime, no I can't.

Do I think it will happen?

I absolutely do think
that it'll happen.

I do believe that there's life
elsewhere beyond our planet.

How advanced that life
may be is a question,

but, certainly if
we have progressed

to the level of
intelligence that we are,

and some argue that well
maybe we aren't either,

I can't imagine that
other potential life forms

haven't progressed far
beyond where we are.

- [Karen O'Neil] Will we
discover life that is beyond

just the cellular life
and moving on to something

that is intelligent,
boy you know,

it's such a guess.

We might.

- [Tom Burns] I think you have
to be honest with people

from whom you are
asking for funding.

The difficulties are great here

and the chances of
success are very limited.

And you probably
won't find anything.

- [Michael Holstine]
Funding of basic research seems
to be a challenge.

Especially in this day and age.

We can't say that we're
creating anything.

We're not building widgets,

we're not selling
something for retail,

we're doing basic research.

And basic research
sometimes is a hard sell.

Americans like a
result, you know.

They like something they
can hold in their hands.

- [Ellie White] Careful.

- [Shopper] Where is Copernicus?

- [Ellie White]
There's a tag in there

it says loose.
- [Shopper] Is that Einstein

right there?
- [Ellie White] Yeah.

- Ever since 2012,
the observatory has faced

some issues in terms
of decreased funding.

- [Narrator] As the
first National Radio

Astronomy Observatory
in the United States,

Green Bank had always
been fully funded

by the National
Science Foundation.

But changing federal priorities

created funding
challenges over the years.

In 2012, the National
Science Foundation

recommended a gradual defunding

of the Green Bank facility.

- [Michael Holstine] You know,
the potential is there

that one of the options is
dismantling the telescope.

You know, we disappear.

And the research that's
done here at Green Bank

could disappear.

- There's nobody
I'm aware of that would like

to see Green Bank close.

And I mean that all
the way to the people

that are making the
funding decisions

to cut back our funding.

They really don't want
to see this place close.

Nobody wants to see
this place close.

- While the observatory
could find other

collaborative parties which
could provide funding,

the problem with that
is the NSF provides

open sky science,
which means anyone

can come in and apply for time,

whether they have
the money or not.

That is a really important
thing to keep going.

We're just gonna try to
do what we can to help

keep that secured.

The Green Bank
Observatory has had

more impact than I can say

on my future and my ideas
of what I'd like to do.

Aspects of astronomy that
I was not familiar with.

For example, I've
gotten so interested

in the instrumentation side.

I just think it's
really important to
have that background

in knowing your
equipment and knowing

what you're researching,

so that you can do
things like compare

is this an actual signal

or is this some sort
of system issue.

Which I think is really
important in SETI

as well as in every field of
research in radio astronomy.

- [Michael Holstine]
When I first met Ellie White,

her and her mother
came into my office.

She was about 11 years old.

And the funding problems
for Green Bank Observatory

had sort of just been released.

And Ellie had been,
in her own time,

creating these cloth
dolls of scientists.

So she picked her favorite
scientific people from history.

And she had a Madam Curie
doll and she had these others.

And the purpose of her visit

was to see if we might want to
sell those in our gift shop.

Which I thought, well
that's kind of cool,

you know maybe we could
do something with her.

But what she said next is
what I'll never forget.

It'll be one of those moments

that will live with me
well after I'm retired.

The reason that she wanted
to sell them in our gift shop

is because she wanted to
give part of the proceeds

back to the observatory
to help fund our mission.

- [Ellie White] So these are
two of the scientist dolls.

This is Nicholas Copernicus
and Albert Einstein.

I started showing them
to people and they said

you should sell these,
so I thought well,

I'll sell them and donate part

of the profits to Green Bank.

- [Interviewer] How
appreciative have they been

about these dolls?

- Very, they're very
appreciative and,

just it's great to hear
some of the stories

of people who come
in and buy 'em.

I think the first
doll that was sold

was to a lady from New Zealand.

- [Interviewer] Will
you keep doing this?

- Yeah, as long as I can keep
up with the demand. (laughs)

- [Michael Holstine]
Green Bank has had such
a profound effect on her.

Just the exposure
to what we do here

changed her completely.

She became so passionate
about astronomy,

so passionate about protecting

the Green Bank
Observatory, to make sure

that other people get
the same reaction,

you know, get the same effect.

- [Deana White] Now this has
been a life-changing experience

for Ellie, for Josh,
my son, for us.

She's learned things
about how to ask questions

without fear, to have curiosity

and enthusiasm about learning,

which is really what we
are all striving for.

And it's what we look
to the heavens for.

- [Karen O'Neil] Ellie's passion
for science and for astronomy

is amazing and it's just
really neat to watch.

If we were, heaven
forbid, to stop funding

fundamental science then I
think we lose a lot of things.

I think in the near
term we lose a little

piece of humanity, I think.

We lose a little
piece of our ability

to just ask the question why

and try to understand
who and how we got here.

And then in the long
term, if you don't have

people doing the basic
fundamental research

you're not gonna have
big breakthroughs

10, 20 years from now in
understanding everything.

And to me that's the most
important part of all this.

- [Stephen] It's time to
commit to finding the answer

to search for life beyond earth.

The Breakthrough Initiatives
are making that commitment.

- Breakthrough Listen
takes the search

for intelligent
life in the universe

to a completely new level.

- [Narrator] In 2015, Russian
billionaire Yuri Milner,

along with Stephen Hawking,
Frank Drake, and others

developed a long-term initiative
dedicated to the search

for intelligent
civilizations beyond Earth.

The highly funded SETI project,

known as Breakthrough Listen,

required the world's most
powerful radio telescopes,

including the world's
largest fully steerable scope

at the Green Bank Observatory.

Much like Ohio State's Big Ear
Telescope many years earlier,

Green Bank's path
led to the search

for extraterrestrial
intelligence,

and the opportunity came
at the perfect time.

- [Michael Holstine]
It's interesting how the timing
of these things works out.

The GBT and the Green Bank site

were in need of finding
external sources of funding.

The Breakthrough Listen program

is a privately-funded project,

over 10 years, with $100
million being spent on it.

It is the next
huge modern search

dedicated to extraterrestrial
intelligence detection.

They needed to utilize
the best technology

that they could find.

And the GBT, the
Green Bank Telescope

is a radio telescope
that can give them

more sensitivity,
more sky coverage,

than any other radio
telescope in the world.

- [Ellie White] The search for
extraterrestrial intelligence

has been going on for
more than 50 years now.

With the advent of
Breakthrough Listen

20% of the Green Bank
Telescope's time per
year is dedicated

to the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence.

And that is hundreds of hours.

Much, much more time and
resources put towards SETI.

So I think that really
ups your chances.

- Would we like to actually
see a signal in there?

Of course, it would be amazing.

It would change the way we
would look at the universe,

because it's one thing
to say there might be

a signal out there, it's
another thing to say

we have found a
signal out there.

- Green Bank is searching
for its own Wow! signal.

We are looking for the signal

that's gonna knock
our socks off.

And we can't wait
'til we find it.

Why would we ever want
to give up the capability

to expand our horizon?

And go back to a level where

even the most basic
question about our universe

has to go unanswered because
we didn't put a dollar into it.

If the GBT or the
Green Bank Observatory

were to disappear, it's gone.

These are national treasures

located all around this country,

and some located all
around the globe,

that we just don't
want to give up.

The amount of money that
it takes to run them

is minuscule compared
to the potential

for expanding our
knowledge that exists

because they are here.

(car engines humming)

- [Interviewer]
This stuff is neat.

What are we looking at in here?

- We're coming to
the Big Ear room.

This is the room that we created

in honor of the Big Ear,

and we made copies
of the Wow! signal,

the data that we
call the Wow! signal.

And we have built a
beautiful scale model

of the telescope,
the Big Ear Telescope.

Imagine taking this element
right here, the collector,

and moving this enormous
metal structure up and down

so that you collect information

from different parts of the
sky than say straight up.

- [Interviewer] Can you
take us out to the Big Ear?

- Sure, let's go.

That just happened, of course.

And we'll get that out
of there eventually.

Humph, eventually.

I come back here
practically every day.

Big Ear is just over
the crest of this hill.

Oh, I hate to walk on a golf
course in my street shoes,

but what are you gonna do?

Ladies and gents, Big Ear.

(gentle music)

- [Narrator] After losing
federal funding in the 1970s,

the Big Ear telescope
shifted to the search

for extraterrestrial
intelligence.

Besides discovering the
historic Wow! signal,

the Ohio State SETI
Program was recognized

by the Guinness Book
of World Records

for running the longest,

full-scale SETI
program for its time.

In 1997, despite
its contributions
to radio astronomy,

developers decided the
land under the Big Ear

would be better served
as a housing development

and golf course.

- [Jerry Ehman] We got word
that the land had been sold

out from under us,
without even informing

Dr. John Kraus or anybody.

They simply sold the
land to land developers.

And their goal was to increase
the size of the golf course

from a nine-hole course
to an 18-hole course,

and then to build some
400 homes on the land.

Just a few months before
John Kraus died at age 94,

he decided he needed
to write a little note

expressing this as
a day of infamy,

the day that he
received notification

that the Big Ear was
going to be torn down.

- [Robert Dixon] That caused
a great hue and cry,

and Ohio State University said

we are not going to
spend money with lawsuits

fighting over developers.

So they threw in the towel.

(melancholy music)

- [Robert Gray] Had they had
a well-financed research program
going,

I think they might
have survived.

Unfortunately, a lot of these
major scientific instruments

get superseded, they
become obsolete.

The interest of
science, scientists,

and science funding
agencies moves on.

- [Tom Burns]
The Big Ear had its day.

It did important
research in astronomy.

It did that SETI research
for all of those years.

But there comes a time
when old technology

simply has outlived
its usefulness

and with sadness
you tear it down.

It was a sad moment
to see it go,

but the simple fact was

that it had outlived
its usefulness.

It had its time in the sun,

and the land was useful
for other purposes.

- [Interviewer] Do you
think a golf course and

housing development, do
you think that was useful?

- Well the fact is that,
before the Big Ear came along,

the land was basically
just wasteland.

It was covered with
trees and brush.

And of course the Big Ear really

wasn't good for much anymore.

The simple fact was it
was frozen in place.

You could no longer
remove the main primary

light gathering device
up and down like this,

so it was frozen
in place like this.

So that what they
essentially had to do

was to wait for the sky
to rotate above them

if they wanted to collect
information on a given star,

or from a given star
to do SETI research.

- [Interviewer] People miss it?

- I would say there
was a giant uproar

when the land was sold.

But by the time the Big
Ear was finally torn down,

people weren't so
upset about it.

(gentle music)

- [Robert Gray] Is the
Ohio State Observatory an icon?

A temple of science
that shouldn't

have been demolished?

It accomplished a lot, but I
don't think it was an icon.

Unfortunately, if it turns out

the Wow! signal's
the real thing,

that sometime,
somewhere down the road

somebody demonstrates that
it's an interstellar broadcast,

it'll be tragic that

the Ohio State Radio
Telescope was torn down.

- [Seth Shostak] If the Wow!
signal had been verified,

if it had been found again,

then, you know, it
would be in every

history book in the world.

That would be in one of the most

important discoveries
of all time.

And because of the
fact that it has

this wonderful name, Jerry
Ehman was really brilliant

to write wow next to it.

If he'd just made a check mark

probably nobody would have
ever heard the Wow! Signal,

at least the public probably
wouldn't have heard of it.

So that's the difference between

a confirmed result and an
ambiguous one, unfortunately.

(gentle music)

- [Narrator] Why do we search?

The road is long,
with few rewards.

The skepticism demanded
by good science

tempers our excitement.

And discovery remains elusive.

And yet we persevere.

Fascinated by the
possibility of what could be.

- [Robert Gray]
Why care about life elsewhere?

That's a good question.

Life here is a riot
of different forms,

colors, sizes, noises,
environments, behaviors.

And I think that people
probably have an innate

interest in whether something
like that happened elsewhere.

And the only way to
settle that question,

of course, is to go look.

- I do think there
is extraterrestrial
intelligent life.

And more than one
instance in our galaxy,

and certainly in our universe.

- [Robert Dixon]
The universe is so vast

and the Earth and the
sun are not unique

in any way that we know of.

There are literally
millions and billions

of other planets like the Earth.

It just seems
scientifically improbable

that life would have
emerged only here.

But on the other hand,
someone has to be the first.

So maybe we are the first.

If so, it gives us a
greater responsibility

to say, all right,
we're the first,

we better not destroy ourselves.

We better repopulate
the universe

and make things
better for everyone.

And not blow ourselves
up in some stupid way.

- [Scott Gaudi] We desperately
want meaning of some sort.

We'd like to know
why we're here.

Are we here just
by random accident

or are we here on purpose?

We are trying to find
context to our humanity.

- [Seth Shostak]
It's really hard to predict

what the consequences
of finding a signal,

proving that we're not alone.

What consequences
that would have?

This would be sort of
an inflection point,

a change in human civilization,

'cause we would know that
somebody's out there.

If we could ever understand
any part of the signal

that might change us much more,

because you would
suddenly be privy

to knowledge that's most likely

far more advanced than our own.

So, you know, that
could change everything.

- [Tom Burns]
Think of the impact of it.

The entire world
would be transformed

when each and every person
on this planet realized

that we are not alone.

We live, sometimes,
in a difficult,

ugly, violent world.

And you're looking for
some solace from that.

And the one thing that

this search for extraterrestrial
intelligence gives you

is that kind of hope.

We want this.

We want that sense, even more,

that we are capable of escaping

the tyranny of the
gravity that holds us.

That we can soar outward
into the universe.

And where do we find that?

In the hope, the faint hope,

that other civilizations
have survived their crises,

been around for long enough

to be able to soar themselves.

We're lonely.

We want that sense

that we are not alone.

We want it so badly.

(tender music)

(inquisitive music)