New research claims to have identified the source of a 72-second extraterrestrial signal captured in 1977.
, amateur astronomer Alberto Caballero has now traced the signal back to a star that closely resembles our Sun — a discovery that sheds new light on what has for decades been a hallmark of SETI research.This star identified by Caballero eluded scientists who went on the hunt for the signal's source after it was discovered. The problem was that there didn't seem to be any Sun-like stars in the area where the Wow! signal seemed to have originated.
relies on a more updated view of the cosmos, so he had more resources and catalogs to probe than astronomers did decades ago. Since 2013, the European Space Agency's Gaia space observatory has been assembling a 3D map of the galaxy, according toThe Gaia map is far more detailed than what astronomers used to hunt for the Wow! signal's origin in the past, and Caballero was able to identify a Sun-like star in the Sagittarius constellation, right where the signal seems to have come from.