Wow! Signal source there could be comets and not aliens

One of the most interesting events of all space exploration is the registration of the so-called Wow! Signal! in 1977. Then astronomers were very actively looking for traces of extraterrestrial civilizations in the Universe (they are still looking for them), and it is believed that this signal could be just such a trace / signal from an extraterrestrial civilization.

Since then, astronomy has gone a long way forward, improving the technology of space exploration. Now many scientists have no confidence that the signal Wow! is the work of another civilization. The team of scientists from the United States, in particular, believes that the source of the signal could be two comets that passed through the group of stars Chi constellation Sagittarius from July 27 to August 15, 1977.

The nuclei of these comets, as scientists found out, are surrounded by very large clouds of hydrogen. The radius of such a cloud reaches several million kilometers. Perhaps these clouds were the source of the signal that was recorded many years ago. The comets themselves were discovered only in 2005, and they did not immediately pay special attention to them, they simply cataloged them. However, the source of the signal was located in 1977 precisely in the area where there were comets.
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Of course, the stated point of view has opponents. For example, some NASA experts claim that cometary clouds emit at different wavelengths, and not at 21-centimeter waves. James Bower from Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena also believes that the “cometary” signal, even if it exists, cannot be compared in strength with the Wow! Nevertheless, the authors of the idea of ​​the cometary origin of the signal will be able to check it - this will happen on January 25, 2017, as well as on January 7, 2018. On these dates, comets will reappear in the solar system, first 266P / Christensen and then P / 2008 Y2.

As for Wow !, Wikipedia tells us the following: “Circled code 6EQUJ5 describes the change in the intensity of a received signal over time. Each line on the printout corresponded to a 12-second interval (10 seconds of actual listening to the air and 2 seconds of subsequent computer processing). In order to save space on the printout, the intensities were encoded with alphanumeric characters: a space meant an intensity from 0 to 0.999 ..; figures 1–9 are the intensities from the corresponding intervals from 1,000 to 9,999 ...; intensity, starting from 10.0, was coded by letters (so, 'A' meant intensity from 10.0 to 10.999 ..., 'B' - from 11.0 to 11.999 ..., etc.). The letter 'U' (intensity between 30.0 and 30,999 ...) met only once during the entire operation of the radio telescope. Intensities in this case are dimensionless signal-to-noise ratios; the noise intensity in each frequency band was taken as the average value for the several preceding minutes. ”

By the way, not so long ago, an interesting explanation was discovered for other mysterious signals regularly received by scientists in Australia working with the Parks radio telescope. For 17 years, astronomers received some strange signals, about once or twice a year. And for the first time such signals, called "peritons", were received in 1998. To the credit of scientists, it must be said that almost immediately it was suggested that the peritons were of the earthly origin. The fact is that the signals did not emanate from a certain part of the space, but came from everywhere at once, from the whole firmament. Scientists have decided that the source of the signal - some atmospheric phenomena (possibly lightning).

But everything turned out to be simpler - the microwave signal gave a signal.