KLPX 2 Deep Cuts 96.1 KLPX, Online KLPX 2 Deep Cuts 96.1 KLPX Radio internet, KLPX 2 Deep Cuts 96.1 KLPX USA Radio Comets are giant rocks of ice, dust and carbon. And, as they get closer to the sun, they begin to melt and as they melt they give off a massive envelope of hydrogen, that can be millions of kilometres across. So when we put two and two together, what we have here is a suspect that matches the fingerprint of the Wow! signal. But not everyone is convinced by Antonio's detective work. Few believe that comets produce enough hydrogen to emit such a strong signal. If my theory proves wrong, then I won't be upset. There are no emotions in science. What I'll do is what any other scientist would do, and that's move onto the next suspect. As Antonio continues his hunt, many believe the answer lies far closer to home. Rather than coming from deep space, the most likely source of the Wow! signal is thought to be interference from passing satellites, or aircraft here on Earth. Four years following its discovery, people were beginning to have doubts about the Lorimer Burst, too. Let's get to the bus stop. Because only one had ever been detected. So, did you bring your book? Yes. What was your favourite part of that? When he chewed gum. I knew you were going to say that. So, around , people were actively looking for these bursts in other datasets and then one day I got a call that the first few were found. This might sound exciting, but it really wasn't because these bursts were a lot like the Lorimer Burst, the original burst. But they had a couple of different characteristics which indicated that they definitely were not extragalactic, and that they were from some source, either on the Earth, or maybe just right in our local atmosphere. When I got that call, my heart really did sink and I thought, "Oh, the original burst is probably a similar thing." Just a locally generated signal. So it was very, very depressing. There was also something deeply suspicious about the new bursts. They were far more common in winter and always appeared around lunch time. It was eventually discovered they weren't coming from space at all. They were being generated by the observatory's microwave. So I think it was a hard time for him because he felt like his original paper was discredited. It made it harder that everyone had been calling it the Lorimer Burst because then it felt very personal. When I first saw the data and I compared their properties with the Lorimer Burst properties, they looked really similar and I thought it too much of a coincidence for them not to be coming from the same source. My initial conclusion was that the Lorimer Burst probably wasn't real. But Duncan wasn't prepared to give up on his discovery so easily. So what we're looking at here is the original burst from , and then one of the detections that was coming out in , so you can see that they have quite a lot of similarities. Both pulses are about the same width. But if you look at them in terms of their frequency versus time, you'll see that they have an overall slope. They both have the same slope, but the structure within the pulse is quite different. One of the new signals has this very blotchy appearance, whereas our original signal had a smoother, continuous appearance. And that was the thing that was really giving me hope that this was still real. But for the scientific community, the most likely explanation for the Lorimer Burst was still interference. For now, at least, the great silence persists. In , the International Academy of Astronautics approved a post-detection protocol. A code of practice to be put into play by governments should we detect an alien transmission. The document detailed how to control the dissemination of information and coordinate a unilateral response. One reason scientists believe such a protocol was required Radio Radio is because in the mid-'s, we tried to make contact with aliens ourselves. There were two purposes to the Arecibo message. One was to demonstrate that it was possible to send a message across the interstellar space that would be detectable and decodable, understandable. The other was simply to show that we had in fact reached the