The Higgs boson visits Atlantis

Well, the Higgs boson is apparently a reality, a finding that had one CERN researcher stating to reporters, "A lot of bets are going to be settled up today."  The likelihood that the particle observed in two separate experiments, CMS and ATLAS, was the Higgs was placed at 99.9999%, which seems like pretty good odds to me.  (Source)

The finding is a major vindication for the Standard Model, the theory that describes how particles interact, generating fields, forces, and a variety of other phenomena, and will surely be the springboard to launch a whole new set of experiments designed to expand what we know about physics.

Unfortunately, it has already been the springboard for a variety of Non-Standard Models by woo-woos who take the Higgs boson's nickname ("The God Particle") far too literally.  And it didn't help that within the past few weeks we have had announcements from two other fields, Mayan archaeology (the discovery of a text that allegedly confirms the calendar "end date" of December 21, 2012) and paleoclimatology/geology (a seafloor survey that describes the topography of "Doggerland," the land mass that spanned what is now the southern North Sea between Britain and Denmark when the sea level was lower, during the last ice age).

Maybe you'll see where this is going when I tell you that the media has already nicknamed Doggerland "Atlantis."  (Sources here and here)

So.  Yeah.  Higgs boson + Mayans + Atlantis = WHOA.  And if you add the Easter Island statues into the mix, we just have a coalescence of woo-woo-ness that makes you wonder why we don't just have a Celestial Convergence right here in our living rooms, just from reading about it.

Regular readers of Skeptophilia will not be surprised that the assembly of these four unrelated topics together into some kind of Cosmic Hash is the brainchild of frequent flyer Diane Tessman, who has written about it here.  Ms. Tessman starts off with a little bit of self-congratulation:

It’s been a week of exciting, dynamic 2012 events! I made a prediction back in the early 1990s that archeological discoveries in the final phase of the Change Times would be landmark events that would answer long-unanswered questions.

I predicted that not only these landmarks were significant in themselves but they would be a catalyst for UFO disclosure, alien landings, and a change in reality-perception (level of consciousness) for all humankind.

Maybe my predictions expect too much to manifest from these pivotal archeological discoveries but this is not the time to be a skeptic, because after all, I was right about the astounding discoveries. We shall see about the rest of my predictions in the future.

Yup.  That we shall.

She then goes on to describe (1) how the discovery of mammoth bones, human artifacts, and terrestrial features like river beds on the North Sea floor shows that Atlantis is real, (2) the discovery that the Easter Island moai statues have bodies shows that UFOs are real, (3) the discovery of the new Mayan text shows that the whole Mayan prophecy nonsense is real, and (4) the discovery of the Higgs boson shows that God/Celestial Consciousness is real.  Or something like that.  With Diane Tessman, it's hard to tell, sometimes.  Here's what she had to say about the Higgs:

So, science has confirmed what spiritual people knew all along: There is a God Spark, a God particle. Of course many people feel “it” (he/she/it) is within us, not out there in the universe of physics. Truth might be, it is everywhere, just as sub-atomic particles are everywhere and just as consciousness itself is everywhere. The universe is consciousness!

Yup, I'm sure that's what the physicists at CERN are saying today.  "Wow, I'm glad we showed that the Higgs exists.  But after all, I felt it all around me, all the time, because, you know, consciousness.  And god.  And everything.  So we really didn't need to do that experiment, we could have just experienced the Higgs."

I get kind of hot under the collar when people who don't understand science hijack discoveries made by actual trained, working scientists for their own silly purposes.  It misleads, it muddies the water, and (worst) it cheapens the years of work done by the people who are some of the clearest thinkers in the world.  I'll be the first to admit that I understand only the vaguest, shallowest bits of the Standard Model and how the Higgs boson fits into it; but then, I don't go pontificating to my readers about what it all means as if I were a physicist.

Okay.  I should just calm down a little, because (after all) it's not like the scientists at CERN (or the geologists who are studying Doggerland, or any other working researchers) are losing much sleep over Ms. Tessman and her ilk.  So, I guess, let her have her spiritual quantum-physics-powered UFOs from Atlantis, or whatever the hell it is she believes in.  Me, I'm just going to have another cup of coffee and read some more press releases from the physicists, because however you interpret it, you have to admit that this stuff about the Higgs boson is pretty freakin' cool.

Jesus saves: the role of money in belief

Every once in a while, while considering topics for Skeptophilia, I run into a belief, claim, or point of view that is so completely foreign to my way of thinking that when I first read about it, I can barely even understand it. 

Please note that I am not talking about the usual run of things that form the basis of most of my posts here.  While I am an atheist, I can certainly understand the appeal of there being a deity watching over us, and that the events around us have meaning and purpose.  My inclination is to believe that there are no such things as ghosts, but I see why people are fond of the idea, being that winking out like a candle flame when you die seems kind of... grim.  Less seriously, I get why people like the idea of there being odd, mysterious creatures in the world, such as Bigfoot, Nessie, El Chupacabra, the Bunyip, and the rest of the gang.

But yesterday, a friend and frequent Skeptophilia contributor sent me an article from the Phnom Penh Post (heaven alone knows how he found it, he lives in Minnesota) that reflects an approach to knowledge, understanding, and the universe that at first I found bafflingly incomprehensible.

The article is entitled "Ethnic Minority Turn To Jesus As More Affordable Option."  Apparently, in a village in Ratanakkiri District, Cambodia, there has been a mass conversion to Christianity -- not because they decided it was true, but because it's... cheaper.

Somkul village, inhabited by people of the Jarai ethnic group, have traditionally held a combination of Buddhist and animist beliefs.  And amongst these beliefs was that if a relative fell ill, the only way to free him from the clutches of the evil spirits causing the disease was to slaughter a buffalo, at a cost of about US$500.

Apparently, some years ago, missionaries appeared, and told the villagers about Christianity.  When the villagers found out that all you had to do was put a little money in the collection plate every Sunday, and when you got ill, you pray to Jesus, they said, "Heck yeah, that sounds like a much better deal!"

Sev Chel, a 38 year old woman from Somkul, told reporters how before her conversion, an illness cost her a bundle to pay for the buffalo, chickens, rice wine, and all of the other stuff necessary for the ritual.

"So if I sold that buffalo and took the money to pay for medicine, it is about 30,000 riel to 40,000 riel [for them to] get better, so we are strong believers in Jesus," she said.  "If I did not believe in Jesus, maybe at this time I would still be poor and not know anything besides my community."

Kralan Don, 60, agrees.  "We believe in Christianity because we are poor; we don’t have money to buy buffaloes, chickens and pigs to pray for the spirits of the god of land or the god of water when those gods make us get sick," he said.

Okay, now wait just a moment, here.  You believe in Jesus' power to make you well not because you think it's real, but because it's cheaper?

At first, I thought, "Well, okay, maybe they believe both in Jesus and in their old gods and spirits and so on, but have switched to worshiping Jesus because they think he's more powerful -- and also, as an added benefit, less demanding in a monetary sense."  But no: the article makes a strong point that the villagers understand perfectly well that Christianity is strictly monotheistic, and that in order to adhere to it, they have to accept that their old beliefs were simply wrong.

So, I'm forced to the conclusion that these people have decided what they believe purely based on selfish motives -- not whether it makes sense, nor whether it's appealing, nor based on their interpretation of the available evidence, all of which are motives that I can understand.  They have decided that something is true solely because it is in their best financial interest to do so.

Anyhow, I was sitting here this morning, pondering this, and all of a sudden, I had a chilling thought; how is this so very different to our approach to hydrofracking?  For those of you who don't live in natural-gas-rich parts of the United States, and are unfamiliar with this gas extraction technique, it is a method that involves pumping up groundwater, adding various chemicals to it (the makeup of most of these chemicals falls under the "proprietary information" laws and has not been made public), and then forcing it back into wellheads under pressure to shatter rock strata and make gas easier to remove.  The anti-fracking movement claims that the process has contaminated groundwater (including that used for drinking water), caused environmental damage, and might even be responsible for triggering earthquakes.  Fracking advocates say that none of that is true, that the process is completely safe.

And who, exactly, are the advocates of fracking?  The ones who stand to make money from gas leases.  The places you see lots of pro-fracking signs in people's yards are almost entirely poor communities whose economies would be boosted, at least in the short term, by gas revenue.  So these folks believe that the natural gas companies' claims that hydrofracking is safe are true not because they have been demonstrated to be true -- they believe because it is in their financial best interest to believe.

And suddenly, the conversion of the Jarai didn't seem so baffling, after all.

A few thoughts about loss

I lost a good friend two days ago to one of those lightning-fast, unpredictable deaths that leave us all reeling, wondering how someone so vital, so apparently healthy, could suddenly be gone.  Diana, a 47-year-old history teacher at my school, was driving home on the last day of school, and apparently felt ill and pulled her car over to the side of the road.  She was later found there, unconscious.  She had suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage from which she died eight days later.

I am not a person who forms friendships easily, something about myself I don't like and don't completely understand, but Diana was someone who reached out to me pretty much from the moment she was hired, about twelve years ago.  I've taught two AP classes (biology and environmental science) for more years than I will willingly admit, and when Diana was assigned to teach AP World History, she actively solicited advice from her colleagues who had more experience than she did in these college-level curricula.  This began a friendship that expanded into a shared interest in human ecology (and the writing of Jared Diamond), medieval European history, music, and fiction.  About a month ago, she read one of my novels, and liked it so much she was pushing me to write a sequel (which I have actually begun to work on); and my fiction inspired her to try her hand at writing.  The last week of school she sent me the first ten pages of a historical novel, which was compelling and well-written, and said she was going to work on it more this summer.

The best-laid plans of mice and men, Robert Burns famously said, gang aft agley.  Or as Thomas à Kempis put it, "Man proposes, God disposes" -- an aphorism I agree with in principle, if not in literal detail.  We plan our lives far in advance -- taking an Alaskan cruise in summer of 2014, going to China after we retire, and so on.  If anyone asked, we'd say that of course we know that it might not happen; any number of circumstances, up to and including death, could intervene.  But we have to keep planning, somehow, even in that knowledge.  Funny creatures, humans.

When I posted on Facebook that Diana had fallen grievously ill, and then that she had died, this elicited an outpouring of sympathy that was truly amazing.  I was the recipient of well-wishes and words of comfort from hundreds of people.  All of this has left me pondering how I can wrap my mind around the concept of death and loss.  Is there a way to fit this into the context of the understandable?

Of course, being an atheist and a rationalist, I don't have recourse to the supernaturalist claim that even tragic events like this one somehow fit into God's plan for the world.  That comfort is beyond my reach, and (to my mind) never sounded like much more than an equivocation to me in any case.  You'll hear the devout say that sure, some good, kind, honest people die young, and some unkind, greedy, cruel people live long, prosperous lives, but still it is all part of the divine purpose.  To me, this says no more, really, than "we don't know why but would like to think there's a reason, because it sure seems like a crappy outcome to us."  On the other hand, the opposite end of the philosophical spectrum -- that unexpected deaths just happen, and mean no more than a bug hitting a windshield -- seems so bleak as to leave me wondering, "Why bother at all?"

After a couple of days of mulling the whole thing over, I think I've finally realized that what matters is how we change the world.  I'm not talking about big changes, necessarily; people like Wangari Maathai, a hero of mine who died last year, are sadly few (and if you don't know who this amazing woman is, go here and prepare to be awed by what one dedicated human being can accomplish).  What I'm talking about is the personal legacy of friendships that you leave.  Who have you taught, learned from, connected with, treated with kindness?  Who have you cared for or received care from?  Whose life have you, through your attention, made a little more beautiful, a little less painful?

I don't, honestly, have the need to have it all make sense.  My belief is that in the common definition of the word, it doesn't make sense.  Death comes for us all eventually, an idea I don't find frightening so much as incomprehensible.  Maybe we're not built to think long about the big existential questions; what matters most is the here and now, how we can live our lives and care for the ones around us.  The lesson I took from Diana's death is to make every day count, because you never know how many you have left.  Hug your children, your significant other, your family members, your pets -- hell, hug total strangers if you want to, because this world has too damn much pain and uncertainty and not nearly enough love and comfort.  Take care of yourselves and the people in your life.  Be kind to each other, even little kindnesses like letting someone go ahead of you in the checkout line at the grocery store.  And in the end, if your life can end with people getting together -- as I did the evening after I learned of Diana's death -- and holding up a glass of their favorite libations, and saying a few words of thanks for how you made their world a better place, you will have done what you could.

Happy World UFO Day!

Well, allow me to be the first to wish you a happy World UFO Day.

I'll bet most of you didn't even know it was World UFO Day.  It is, and this event, like many wacky things in this world, has its own website.  And on this website, we learn what this international event is all about:

There are several reasons why this day has found it's [sic] way into the world.
On [sic] of the first and foremost reasons is to raise awareness about the undoubted existence of UFO's and with that intelligent beings from outer space.

Also this day is used to encourage governments to unclassify their knowledge about sightings throughout the history. Many governments, the US government for instance, are believed to have gained exclusive information about UFO's through their military departments. A subject that still raises a lot of curiosity is the Roswell incident in 1947 when a believed UFO crashed in Roswell New Mexico.

And on this day, here's what we're supposed to do:

It is encouraged for individual believers to organize their own parties during World UFO day. People are known for looking at the sky together during this day and doing other UFO themed activities. For instance watching UFO movies together even meditate in groups on the subject. The most important thing is that people collectively open their minds to the subject for one day and send out the message mentally that UFO's are welcome on this earth.

I'm not so sure how I feel about the last bit.  I mean, don't these people generally believe that the aliens are hostile?  Seems to me that whenever I have watched a UFO movie, humans end up being abducted, and it usually results in a wince-inducing scene involving an examining table, restraining straps, and various types of probes.  And call me a wuss, but I really don't feel much like meditating on that.

Apparently, though, there are a lot of people who do.  On the list of "participating groups," I found that just the "Dubai Research Congregation" alone has 2,500 members.   In fact, 21 groups are listed, each with their own website or Facebook page, for a total of over 158,000 members.

If meditating on UFO movies doesn't appeal, though, there are suggestions on the website for other ways to celebrate this holiday.  These include:

• Watch the sky together and spot strange object [sic] flying around.
• Wear or create your own UFO/alien t-shirts.
• Share knowledge (books, videos, etc.) with proof that UFOs exist.
• Create original looking UFOs out of frisbees or perform other creative actions. 

And all of this is to move forward with their vision statement, to wit:

Our main vision is to take a worldwide celebrated holiday and make people aware of the UFO phenomenon during this day. We see a future in which UFOs aren't speculations anymore, but part of daily life.

I'm not so sure I see that future, myself.  I'd love to think that there is alien life out there, and it'd be flat-out awesome if there was some science and technology humans haven't discovered yet that would allow us to travel over interstellar distances.  But these people are making Earth sound like Grand Central Station, with the UFOs arriving daily in such numbers that it's a wonder they don't end up in giant traffic jams over our airspace.  Now, no one would think it was cooler than me if a spaceship landed in my back yard (provided I wasn't right earlier about the restraints and probes).  And especially with the recent discovery of thousands of exoplanets, I think that the likelihood of a good many of them being homes to life is quite high.

But still.  Why the hell would they want to come here?  I mean, I like it here, but you'd think that if you could whisk your way across the galaxy, there would have to be more interesting places to go.  A superintelligent alien race coming to Earth is a little like some teenager finally getting his driver's license and a car, and his parents tell him he can take a road trip anywhere he wants during the summer, and he thinks, "I know!  I'll drive... to Newark!"

Be that as it may, there are some very intelligent people who think there might be something to the whole UFO thing.  Most famously, Michio Kaku said, in an interview on Larry King Live, "95% of these sightings can be dismissed, but 5% of them really give you the willies.  5% of them can't be explained easily with the known laws of physics...  We’ve looked at all the alternatives. These are multiple sightings by multiple modes. That is, pilots, eyewitnesses (on the ground), radar, visual sightings. These are very hard to dismiss, this handful of sightings...  We’re talking about generals, Air Force pilots, governors of states that claim, 'Hey, this is beyond our understanding of the laws of physics.'"

So, maybe my inclination to scoff is ill-founded.  If Kaku, with his training in the principles of scientific induction, not to mention his general good sense, can be this open-minded about the whole issue, who am I to say he's wrong?  So, in that spirit, I will wish you all a happy World UFO Day.  Enjoy your movies, meditations, and "creative actions" such as making a UFO out of a frisbee.  And I especially want to give a cheerful wave to our friends in the "Dubai Research Congregation."

Stars, science, and Cherokee rattlesnake prophecies

It is an inevitable consequence of writing daily on this blog that I get a lot of emails, some of them from people I've pissed off.

Although none of them could quite live up to the three-page screed I got last year from a young-earth creationist who ended by calling me a "worthless wanker," one I got this week comes close -- if not in passion, at least in general disconnect from reality.

The writer, who signed off as "Eva," took me to task for filing astrology, Tarot, divination, Mayan prophecies, and so on under the collective heading of "woo-woo" (and summarily dismissing the lot).

"In your close mindedness," Eva writes, "you are missing the fact that modern astrologers and students of the mystical have learned from the approach of your beloved scientists, not only has our precision become better, we now combine many different fields of study, using each one to carefully check our predictions.  We then only make public the statements that can be verified by this comparative process.  Divination has only a short way to go to truly become a science."

Well, now.  Where do I start?

My first response was to express some incredulity that she was really comparing what scientists do -- to take one example, the use of data and measurements from chemistry, physics, and geology to develop the theory of plate tectonics -- to what astrologers do.  Does she really think that if an astrologer predicts that your Star Signs say that you're going to fall down the stairs and break your leg next Tuesday, and a Tarot card reader does a reading for you and says the same thing, that this is some sort of independent corroboration of the method?  But of course, that really is what she thinks.  The lack of a mechanism by which astrology could possibly work, not to mention the lack of evidence that it does work, never seems to bother her.

But as the infomercials always say, "Wait!  There's MORE!":

"Although we differ in our beliefs, I don't want you to consider this a criticism of you as a person.  I'm sure you're trying in your own way to reach enlightenment, we all are, it's all a process and we're all on our own spiritual paths, I am just trying to encourage you to open your mind that there could be other possibilities than the narrow view of the world that science has produced is."

I showed a friend of mine Eva's email, and her response was, "Wow, she really is the Queen of the Comma Splice, isn't she?"  Not to mention the last clause, which (despite my MA in linguistics) completely defeated me when I attempted to parse it.  But any structural editing concerns aside, I have to admit that Eva is showing a good bit more kindness and tolerance than a lot of my other critics have, and for that I'm grateful.  I did take issue with the "narrow view" comment, but I guess that's to be expected.

"I would encourage you to take a look at a website that I think is one of the best out there, it will demonstrate for you that there are many approaches to knowledge that bring fruitfulness and enlightenment, and embody that scientific approach I mentioned, I hope you can view it with an open mind and not dismiss it as 'woo-woo' without giving it some thought, not just with your mind but with your heart too.

"Walking together in light and love, Eva."

And she ended with a link to a webpage called DarkAstrology, of which I will quote only the first paragraph:

The 2012 Astrology Forecast is very interesting because this year has been much anticipated due to Mayan and other predictions. There are actually a great deal of extremely significant astrological aspects and eclipses to back up all the excitement. Uranus square Pluto is a very big deal, responsible for the growing financial turmoil and revolutions. There is a rare Transit of Venus, a total solar eclipse in the Pleiades Star Cluster of Taurus, and finally a Jupiter Yod in the Bulls Eye of Taurus.

Oh, my, yes, this does convince me.  A Jupiter Yod in the Bull's Eye of Taurus.  That has to mean, um, something important, I'm sure.  And later on, when it does some Highly Scientific Corroboration by looking at other fields of study -- Sumerian oracle stars and Cherokee rattlesnake prophecies seem to be two of the most important ones -- it just adds up to all kinds of Enlightenment Beyond The Narrow View Of Science.

I'm sorry if I'm coming across as snarky, because Eva really was quite nice, and seemed like she was trying to reach out to me in my closed-mindedness.  Sadly, DarkAstrology just isn't doing it for me.  Science isn't about making stuff up, and then checking to see if you're right by talking to other people who have made stuff up to see if they agree with you.  It's based on this pesky little thing called evidence, and unfortunately for the "science of divination," there isn't any.

All of this makes me feel kind of mean-spirited, really, after Eva wished me love and enlightenment and so on.  Maybe I am a worthless wanker after all.  Oh, well, perhaps that's just where I currently am on my "spiritual path."

The critics of critical thinking

I fear for the future of education.

I am about tennish-or-so years from retirement, depending on whether New York State decides in the interim to offer any retirement incentives to get us old guys out, and also whether there's any money to pay for my pension by the time I get there.  Be that as it may, I do find myself wondering sometimes how much longer I'll be able to do this job in this increasingly hostile climate.  Teachers are, more and more, being treated with distrust by the people charged with their governance, and are micromanaged to a fare-thee-well.  As of next school year, New York teachers are going to be given a numerical grade at the end of the year -- the school year starts in two months and the state has yet to determine the formula by which this grade will be calculated.

The worst part, though, is the increasingly intense effort by legislators to control what we teach, despite the fact that they're not the ones who have training in pedagogy (or, necessarily, any expertise in educational policy).  And I'm not just talking here about the repeated attempts by fundamentalist elected officials to mandate the teaching of creationism in biology classrooms; I'm talking about something far scarier, and further reaching. 

Yesterday, a friend of mine who lives in Texas sent me a link to the Texas GOP website, which contains a summary of their official platform.  (The platform itself is a pdf, so here's a link to a webpage where you can access it if interested.)  And on page 13, under "Educating Our Children," we find the following:

Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

This was one of those "I can't be reading that correctly" moments for me; I read it three times, and finally said, with some incredulity, "Nope, that's what it actually says."  They're against critical thinking?  They're against values clarification?  Education should never challenge a student's fixed beliefs?

I'm sorry, Texas GOP.  That's not just wrong, it's dangerously wrong.  Might I remind you that the the most successful historical example of what you're proposing was the Hitler Youth program in Nazi Germany?

Even the word education, at its origin, doesn't mean "shut up and memorize this;" the word comes from the Latin verb educare, which means "to draw out."  The idea is to give students ownership and pride in their own learning, to encourage them to draw out from their own minds creative solutions to problems and novel syntheses of the facts they've learned.  In order to accomplish this, critical thinking is... well, critical.  Great innovation does not come from blindly accepting the fixed beliefs and authority of your parents' generation -- it comes from questioning your own assumptions, and putting what you know together in a new, unexpected way.

And for me personally, I'm not going to stop challenging.  In fact, I teach a semester-long elective class called Critical Thinking that is one of the most popular electives in the school, and on the first day of class, I walk in and say, "Hi, class.  My name is Mr. Bonnet.  Why should you believe anything I say?"

After a moment's stunned silence, someone usually says, "Because you're a teacher."  (Every once in a while some wag will shout, "We don't!"  To which I respond, "Good!  You're on the right track.")  To those who say, "Because you're a teacher," I say, "Why does that matter?  Could a teacher be wrong?  Could a teacher lie?"

Of course, they acquiesce (some of them with a bit of discomfort).  So then I repeat my question; why would you believe what I'm saying?

This starts us off on an exploration of how you tell truth from lies; how you detect spin, marketing, bias, and half-truth; how to recognize logical fallacies; how to think critically in the realm of ethics and morals; and we end by taking apart the educational system, to give a thoughtful look at its successes and failures.  And (importantly!) I never once interject my own beliefs; I needle everyone equally.  When a student presses me to tell the class what I believe on a particular subject, my stock response is, "What I believe is irrelevant.  My job is to challenge you to examine your own beliefs, not to superimpose mine."

And this sort of thing is, apparently, what the Texas GOP would like to see eliminated from schools.  We mustn't have kids doubting the wisdom of the Powers-That-Be.  We must keep education in the realm of the vocabulary list and worksheet packet.  We mustn't challenge the status quo.  (And the darker, more suspicious side of my brain adds, "And we mustn't have the younger generation recognizing it when they're being lied to or misled.")

Well, I'm sorry.  You're wrong.  What you're suggesting is the very antithesis of education.  And the day I'm told that I can't do this any more -- that my teaching can't provoke, can't knock kids' preconceived notions off balance, can't ask the all-important question "Why do you think that?" -- that will be my last day in the classroom, because there won't be any place left in education for teachers like me.

Responding to the Wow Signal

On August 15, 1977, Jerry Ehrman, a scientist working on the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Project, was doing some research using the "Big Ear" Radio Telescope at Ohio Wesleyan University's Perkins Observatory -- and something astonishing happened.

For 72 seconds, a high intensity, narrow-band signal, at a frequency of 1420 MHz, was detected by the telescope.  The origin of the signal was near the Chi Sagittarii star group.  The signal was so strong, and so unexpected, that Ehrman wrote the single word, "Wow!" next to it -- and it has been thereafter called the "Wow Signal."

Despite many efforts to account for the Wow Signal, there have been no convincing explanations regarding its origins.  Ehrman himself, while initially doubtful that it was of extraterrestrial origin -- his first thought was that it was a terrestrial signal that had reflected from the surface of space debris -- has backed off from that position, given that (1) the frequency of the signal, 1420 MHz, is a "protected" frequency, because it is precisely the frequency at which hydrogen (the most common element in the universe) emits, and is reserved for astronomical research; and (2) the "space debris" postulated in Ehrman's initial explanation would have to have "significant and unrealistic constraints on its size and movement" in order to account for the signal.

The Wow Signal, a plot of intensity as a function of time

Repeated attempts to relocate the signal have failed.  Whatever it was, it seems to have been a one-time occurrence -- or we haven't had our radio telescopes aimed that way when it's happened again.

Now, however, we're about to try to produce our own version of Wow -- via Twitter.  (Source)

The ChasingUFO project is aiming to create a large, focused signal, aimed at Chi Sagittarii -- composed of thousands of Tweets.  The National Geographic Channel, as a publicity stunt to celebrate the launch of its new series Chasing UFOs, is sponsoring a mass Twitter event this Friday, June 29, starting at 8 PM Eastern Time and ending at midnight Pacific Time.  Any tweets sent during that time with the hashtag #ChasingUFOs will be rolled together and beamed into space, aiming at the spot where Wow was detected.

Me, I'm psyched.  I've always been fascinated with Wow -- okay, yeah, maybe there's a conventional explanation for it, but I'm damned if I can see what it might be.  Even the frequency is suspicious -- given that 1420 MHz corresponds to one of the main spectral lines of the hydrogen atom, it makes sense that if you were an intelligent alien, you'd have your radio telescope tuned to that frequency -- and also, that if you were sending a signal, you'd choose that frequency because it would be likely to be detected.  So my feeling is -- and it is just a feeling -- the Wow signal is the best candidate we currently have for a communiqué from an extraterrestrial intelligence.

So I'm trying to decide what I'm gonna say.  I'm thinking that "Hi aliens! We love you! Please don't come here and vaporize us with laser pistols!" might be a little disingenuous.  Maybe a simple, "We're curious about you.  If you're curious, too, please respond," is more in the spirit of the thing.  In any case, I welcome you to join in.  Let's give those aliens a great big shout -- and maybe make them sit back on their heels (or tentacles, or whatever), and say, "Wow!"