The Wow! Signal. It came from empty space
It came from space, but how?
Some say aliens
Some call shenanigans
BoN lays down the law, its.. goddman time I stop this rhyming thing and never, ever, do it again.
Ok, so the wow! signal was recorded way back in 1977 and is the best candidate that we have for a legitimate signal from extraterrestrial life.
The Wow! was because the signal so closely matched what a signal from extraterrestrial life was expected to look like. The numbers represent the strength of the signal above background radiation. Above 9, the scientists switched to letters (to keep to one space on the above printout), so a=10, b=11, etc. This was a very strong signal, hitting u, or 30.
Critically, it comes from a huge empty region of space, which is important because signals should not be coming from huge empty regions of space, unless there is something there, which we cant see, like a space ship. Or a space stegosaurus.
Here a bunch more interesting but somewhat technical discussions from Wikipedia:
Time variation
The Big Ear telescope was fixed and used the rotation of the Earth to scan the sky. At the speed of the Earth's rotation, and given the width of the Big Ear's observation "window", the Big Ear could observe any given point for just 72 seconds. A continuous extraterrestrial signal, therefore, would be expected to register for exactly 72 seconds, and the recorded intensity of that signal would show a gradual peaking for the first 36 seconds—until the signal reached the center of Big Ear's observation "window"— and then a gradual decrease.
Therefore, both the length of the Wow! signal, 72 seconds, and the shape of the intensity graph may correspond to a possible extraterrestrial origin.[3]
Speculations on the signal's origin
Interstellar scintillation of a weaker continuous signal—similar, in effect, to atmospheric twinkling—could be a possible explanation, although this still would not exclude the possibility of the signal being artificial in its nature. However, even by using the significantly more sensitive Very Large Array, such a signal could not be detected, and the probability that a signal below the Very Large Array level could be detected by the Big Ear radio telescope due to interstellar scintillation is low.[4] Other speculations include a rotating lighthouse-like source, a signal sweeping in frequency, or a one time burst. Some have also suggested it could have come from a moving space vehicle of extraterrestrial origin.
Ehman has stated his doubts that the signal is of intelligent extraterrestrial origin: "We should have seen it again when we looked for it 50 times. Something suggests it was an Earth-sourced signal that simply got reflected off a piece of space debris."[6]
He later recanted his skepticism somewhat, after further research showed an Earth-bound signal to be very unlikely, due to the requirements of a space-borne reflector being bound to certain unrealistic requirements to sufficiently explain the nature of the signal.[7] Also, the 1420 MHz signal is problematic in itself in that it is "protected spectrum": it is bandwidth in which terrestrial transmitters are forbidden to transmit.[8][9] In his most recent writings, Ehman resists "drawing vast conclusions from half-vast data."
So basically - what you have here is a signal that did not come from earth, but instead came out of the middle of nowhere, with all of the expected characteristics of extraterrestrial signal. To me, the fact that the signal was heard from that location only once reinforces the fact that it could be extraterrestrial. If I were piloting the damn space ship - I would not hang out in the big empty regions of space for long - I would be getting on my damn way, at something at or above the speed of light.
So, who knows, but to me on this one, occam's razor comes down on the side of an extraterrestrial signal.
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