Wow!? Probably Not

A week ago, the Columbus Dispatch had an article about the Wow! signal (here). For some, this signal is the best evidence we have for extraterrestrial intelligence. It was detected on August 15, 1977 by a radio telescope operated by Ohio State University, and it’s called the Wow! signal because when a volunteer, Jerry R. Ehman, saw a computer printout of the signal, he wrote “Wow!” in the margin. To the disappointment of many, it was never detected again.

Here is an article by Ehman telling about how the signal was detected and what conclusions he has reached. What is interesting about how the signal was detected – and I believe relevant to the conclusion to be drawn – is that their device was stationary (meaning it could not be moved and so could not be aimed at a particular part of the sky) and had two horns that detected signals from the antenna. (Why it had two rather than just one is not explained.) Ordinarily, when a signal from outer space was beamed at the telescope, it would be picked up first by one of the horns, and then a minute later (as the earth rotated) by the other horn. However, with the Wow! signal, only one of the horns picked up the signal. Due to the limitations of their setup, they were unsure which horn picked up the signal, so they don’t know if the signal was turned on or off during that minute when neither horn could have detected it.

Now while Ehman suggests tentatively that this signal might have come from an advanced civilization, I’m going to suggest that it probably didn’t, and I’m going to invoke David Hume in doing so. In his essay on miracles, Hume basically stated that one ought to believe whatever is more likely, whatever has the greater degree evidence in its favor. (And Hume further argued that miracles almost never have the greater degree of evidence in their favor, because any event alleged to go against the laws of nature would be going against all the evidence showing that those are laws, and in the rare case that there was an astounding degree of evidence in favor of the alleged miracle, then we become less certain that the law of nature that is violated is indeed a law of nature.) Now the Wow! signal was not a miracle, but what Hume says applies to unusual, unique events, too. The difference is that we would be asking which is more likely, that this was truly a signal from alien intelligence or that it has a more mundane explanation. So, which is more likely? I say the mundane explanation, and the reason goes back to the fact that the signal was picked up in just one but not both of the horns.

For not only are we supposed to believe that this was a signal from an advanced alien civilization, we are also supposed to believe that they happened to turn on or off their signal during the minute when neither horn was in the signal’s beam. And that seems staggeringly unlikely. I’m not saying it was impossible. I can concoct scenarios as well as anyone for its being possible. An advanced civilization is sending a signal to someone, either another advanced civilization or to members of its own species who are out in space. For a few minutes they have their signal aimed the wrong direction, but then they realize this and correct it. (And this would explain why we haven’t detected this signal again, because the aliens seldom make mistakes like that.) Or perhaps the alien planet is sending a signal to one of their spaceships that is in a position in the sky that is very unusual for one of the spaceships to be in. Maybe even the aliens somehow detected us detecting them and so turned off their signal. And so on. But I still say that all of this, while possible, is highly unlikely.

But what is likely? Ehman examines several mundane explanations (planets, reflections off of a satellite, and so on), but is satisfied with none of them. A physicist friend of mine suggested bird droppings, but that doesn’t seem to fit the profile of the signal. But one explanation that Ehman neglects is the possibility that this was a practical joke, which is much easier for me to believe in than that an alien civilization happened to turn on or off their signal right during a crucial minute. I’m not accusing Ehman of fooling us, but rather that someone was fooling him.

In favor of this explanation, let me note that Ehman asserts that at the time the Wow! signal was received, no one was at the telescope, but how does he know? All he means by this is that no one was scheduled to be there. Anyone might have been there, and that person might have been tampering with the equipment. (He says nothing about the security measures they had in place.) Naturally, that person needed to have some technical knowledge to perpetrate this joke, but again it is far more likely that such a person was there tampering with the equipment than that an alien civilization was sending us a signal and that they just happened to turn it on or off during the minute that the signal was between the two horns.

And practical jokes and hoaxes aren’t completely unknown in science and academia. One example from a few years back was the article submitted to the journal Social Text by the physicist Alan Sokal, which he very quickly admitted was sheer nonsense. Another was the Piltdown Man, to which can be added crop circles, movies of Big Foot, and so on. So, I suspect that somewhere out there, someone is snickering to himself because he managed to fool some scientists. Or else there is someone out there who wanted to play a small joke on a friend, only to find that the whole thing very quickly blew out of proportion, making him afraid to come forward to confess.

I admit that behind my reasoning is my belief that the existence of alien species that are technologically advanced isn’t very likely to begin with. Notice that I said “technologically advanced” and not “intelligent.” I’m quite willing to believe that there’s plenty of intelligent life elsewhere in our galaxy. I just think that the rise of science is not inevitable and in fact is very unlikely. I say this because the rise of science here on earth happened just once, and the path to that rise did not consist of steady progress, but of many twists and turns over the course of a couple millennia that easily could have happened otherwise. Science started with the Greeks, who began using reason to reach conclusions about the natural world, but who did not get very far. Their method and results were preserved by the Romans, then by the Byzantines and the Arabs, who transmitted them to Medieval Europe, where eventually science as we now know it came into being. Notice that at any step along this path, the whole enterprise might have been destroyed. If three hundred Spartans hadn’t sacrificed themselves at Thermopylae, if the Greeks had been less tolerant than they were, if the Romans hadn’t admired Greek culture, and so on, it is very likely that we wouldn’t have science today.

I didn’t always think this way. Growing up, I was immersed in science rather than world history and didn’t see how other cultures had done nothing to develop science. Now maybe the Chinese would have developed science eventually, or maybe Hindus would have, but the odds seem to be against it. (Lest I be accused of racism here, let me say that when the Greeks got science going, my own ancestors in northern Europe were doing exactly nothing to help.) Anyway, I just assumed that intelligent creatures would sooner or later develop science. But there are always religious objections to most types of rational reasoning, especially in early cultures, so the idea that the rise of science is inevitable has to be rejected.

Accordingly, if there is only one technologically advanced species out of a hundred out there, then it is very unlikely that the nearest such species is anywhere near the earth. It might be in the Andromeda galaxy, for example. But even if it’s a mere 10,000 light years away, that will be too far to expect any contact.

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