Nearly six decades have passed since the Soviet Union ushered in the era of space exploration with the historic event of the first human leaving the Earth’s gravitational pull, orbiting into space. This event, carried out by astronaut Yuri Gagarin aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft on April 12, 1961, marked a significant milestone in human history.
Since then, alongside aspirations to conquer other planets within the Solar System, humans have been driven by the desire to seek answers to the question “Are humans alone in the universe?” In the vast expanse of the universe, is there a world similar to Earth, with life, civilization, and technology – a mystery that humans have relentlessly pursued for nearly six decades?
In this journey, there have been numerous occasions when scientists believed that we had “caught a glimpse” or “connected” with extraterrestrial beings.
The Wow Signal
On August 15, 1977, astronomer Jerry R. Ehman from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute detected a strong, notable signal from space while reviewing data collected by the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio State University the day before.
What caught Dr. Jerry R. Ehman’s attention was the unique frequency of this signal, which, according to astronomers’ calculations, could not have originated from Earth. Furthermore, the signal’s intensity variation over time led many to believe that it contained an “extraterrestrial message.”
The fluctuation in intensity of the “Wow” signal over time. (Source: Creativecommons).
“WOW” is the expression of Dr. Jerry R. Ehman’s amazement immediately after he discovered this unusual signal. And it is also the name given to the type of signal that scientists worldwide have yet to identify the source of.
Forty-two years after the discovery of “Wow”, astronomers have still not received any signals similar to “Wow1,” or in other words, this signal has not shown signs of repetition. Despite its mysterious origin, for many astronomers, “Wow” is the most plausible candidate as an indication of an “extraterrestrial message” that we have detected.
The Roswell UFO Incident
The Roswell UFO Incident is considered the most significant UFO-related event involving extraterrestrial beings in 1947. It is perhaps the most famous UFO story to date, as military and political figures in the United States commented on the incident repeatedly over many decades.
In the summer of 1947, an unidentified object crashed on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico. A man named William Brazel found the debris and reported to the local sheriff, claiming to have seen the remains of “a being.”
The U.S. military quickly confirmed it as a weather balloon and swiftly closed the case without further explanation.
However, over the decades, UFO and extraterrestrial supporters began to reignite the incident.
A new hypothesis emerged, suggesting that the extraterrestrial bodies were removed from the crash site, and the U.S. government covered up the truth about the Roswell UFO event.
While this may sound far-fetched, in a 2013 survey in the United States, one-fifth of respondents still believed that the Roswell UFO incident was indeed a UFO crash. This makes it one of the most widely believed extraterrestrial-related events.
Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs)
Although the origin of FRBs remains unexplained to this day, the continuous detection of about 60 FRB signals since 2007, including two instances of repeated signals, has led many to believe that these short-lived (a few milliseconds) but incredibly powerful bursts of energy are indicative of an extremely advanced extraterrestrial civilization.
Instead of considering FRBs as communication signals from extraterrestrial beings, in 2017, Professor Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and his colleague Manasvi Lingam of Harvard University proposed a hypothesis that FRBs are a massive energy source used by extraterrestrial beings to propel their spacecraft into the vast expanses beyond the universe.
Many other astronomers suggest that the origin of FRBs comes from powerful natural physical phenomena in space, such as black holes or neutron stars merging with each other.
The existence of extraterrestrial beings, or at least extraterrestrial life, holds immense significance for humanity on Earth. Amidst the vastness of the universe, are humans the only living beings?
There are still many questions, many mysteries about life that, as science advances, we are eager to uncover the answers to.
