>>> Are we alone?

It's a question that has echoed through centuries of human curiosity, stretching from ancient stargazers to modern scientists.

In the summer of 1977, a single radio signal from deep space, lasting just 72 seconds, posed a tantalizing possibility.

Known as the WOW signal, it remains one of the most compelling mysteries in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

>>> My name is Don Stevens, and we are at Perkins Observatory in Delaware, Ohio.

We were built back in 1923.

It was primarily the idea of a guy named Hiram Perkins, who the observatory is named after, who donated the money to build this facility.

The original telescope that was built with this observatory was the third largest in the world at the time when it was built.

As time went on, the light pollution levels increased, particularly in the 1950s when they started installing a lot of streetlights.

And so it was at that point that it was decided to move that telescope.

So about 1956, we started construction of the Big Ear Telescope.

We are out front of Perkins Observatory on our way to the location where the Big Ear Telescope used to be.

The Big Ear was a large radio telescope right here in central Ohio.

It was one of the largest in the world at the time.

It was located near the observatory here.

And it basically was called Big Ear because it was pretty gigantic.

It took up the area of about four football fields.

It was designed basically to scan the sky.

As the earth rotated, it would scan the sky.

When you first think of a telescope, you probably think of an optical telescope that you look into with your eyes.

It collects those rays of light coming in, focuses them, amplifies them so that we can see those faraway things better.

That's what a radio telescope does as well, but it's different wavelengths of light.

Radio waves, just like visible light, they're on the electromagnetic spectrum.

It's just a different wavelength.

So Dr. John Kraus, he was an engineer, a physicist, and a professor at Ohio State University.

And he was at Ohio State at a time when radio astronomy and SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, were really both in their infancy.

There was a lot of hype about it, a lot of talk about it, and Dr. Kraus was passionate about radio astronomy and really a true pioneer in the field.

The Big Ear telescope is a little bit different from other radio telescopes of the day.

He designed it himself, and he applied for grant funding to fund the construction, and then he oversaw the construction of the telescope.

>>> We developed, first of all, the design ourselves, and we did all the construction in -house using students working part -time for most of the work.

These were not just engineering students.

They came from many different departments in the university.

It turned out that our best welder had been a high steel worker in earlier years and a very expert welder.

He was a pre -dental student, and he taught other students welding.

>>> You've got students that were helping amateur astronomers, local experts in different areas.

>>> We had students who were in industrial engineering, who specialized in time and motion studies, and they systematized the operation to make it as efficient as possible.

We just worked away at this for quite a few years.

It was slow, steady, tedious work getting this telescope built and put together.

[ Dramatic Music ] >>> We are currently approaching the former location of the Big Ear radio telescope.

What you're seeing is now it's essentially a retention pond for the golf course.

It basically spanned from the edge of the woods there to the edge of the woods over here, approximately over here where the lake is, is where the bunker was that when the signal came into the feed horn would go down to a little room underneath, underground, where the signal software was and all the mechanical work and electronics and such were buried underground there.

I think it's really cool to imagine being the person who found the Wow!

signal.

This big telescope is scanning the sky, and it's just collecting how strong is this radio wave coming in and what's its frequency, right?

And then it was printing out just like those numbers, right?

So one, two, three, four, five, all the way up to nine, and then it's just a single digit, so after nine they go to A.

So two would be twice as strong as the noise background, A would be10 times as strong as the noise background, so one through nine, and then A, B, C, D, E, F, G, right?

And then people would have to go through it and just look through, is there anything interesting?

Is there anything interesting?

It took a lot of time.

Imagine seeing pages and pages of ones, maybe a three, a two here and there, and then you see 6EQUJ5, right?

That was why he said wow, right?

U is 30 times as strong as the noise in the background.

Nothing was coming anywhere near that strong of a signal.

It was kind of a surprise, right, the signal, and so the question was did this come from some sort of extraterrestrial intelligence that was beaming out radio signals towards us?

>>> There were some people that thought it could be an extraterrestrial intelligence.

Others thought there was some natural phenomenon, such as maybe a quasar, black hole, supernova, or something like that.

So the Wow Signal is, I mean, I think to this day, it's one of the sort of the biggest contenders for something that could have been a signal from intelligent life.

So I think everyone has a natural curiosity and love of the unknown.

We all love a good mystery, right?

The wow signal, it happened almost 50 years ago, and I think the latest paper to come out was shared just last year that tells us that people are still trying to figure out this mystery.

And there's something beautiful about that, whether you're a trained scientist or just someone who enjoys, you know, wondering about the world, wondering if we're alone out there, looking up into space and wondering about the universe.

I think knowing that there's still more to learn is really inspiring to both up -and -coming scientists, but also scientists today.

Today's kids are tomorrow's scientists, tomorrow's engineers, mathematicians, artists, and tomorrow's world leaders, right?

So they're born with that curiosity and that drive, and I think it's so important to nurture it, to nurture scientific thinking, to grow those critical thinking skills so that when they are grownups, when they are our world leaders, our scientists, our engineers, they can confront the problems they're faced with, with critical thinking skills, with their problem -solving skills.

I mean, they're going to be using tools that we've never heard of, and they're going to be exploring parts of the universe that we don't know today exist, right?

So they need the tools to explore that.

>>> That moment when I bring up like a six - or seven -year -old to take their first look at the rings of Saturn and see that little bit of light hit their pupil and the inhalation of breath and then the very quiet wow, almost like the wow signal itself.

So you can see why that is such a powerful expression in many regards.

It expresses wonder, amazement, curiosity, satisfaction, intrigue, all that kind of stuff, all in that one word.

The biggest thing is we just want people to just get out, look up, be curious about your universe around you and its majesty and its beauty, including yourself.

If you are a part of that beauty and majesty of the universe and by exploring what's out there, you can also explore what's in here.