6EQUJ5

In March 1978, just after my 14th birthday I fell head over heels, madly completely in love.

With Kate Bush.

She'd just performed "Wuthering Heights" on Top of the Pops, and I was smitten.  Although I've now grown up and no longer yearn for Kate's attentions, I do still love her (well, early at least) music and was just reminded of another of her songs - a track called "Wow!".

wow

The reason for this trip down memory lane?  I've just watched a video about the wow signal.  An event that occurred in a radio telescope station about a year before the lovely Kate swept me off            my feet.  It was a radio signal picked up from deep space, and its origins are thought be an alien civilisation.

But despite searching that area of space over and over and with increasing depth, the signal has not been heard again.  And, of course, I started to wonder why this might be the case.

In my mind there are four possible scenarios:

1. we are looking in the wrong place

2. it was generated by an alien race, and they did it by accident, with the "being" responsible severely reprimanded for giving their existence away and the signal shut down or shielded in some way

3. it was an alien race, but they are sending their signal to a different place in the cosmos every time (though I think this unlikely as we'd still pick it up)

wow, wow, wow

4. it was the last, desperate act of a dying planet's occupants (this thought does make me very sad)

5. it wasn't generated by an alien race but by someone using a microwave oven in the station's staff canteen.

One of Kate's more recent tracks, the incredibly atmospheric "Hello Earth", really couldn't be more fitting, and I urge you to give it a listen.  It may not be "Wow!", but unlike  the signal you can hear it over and over.

Oh, by the way, there are three types of people in this world - those who can count, and those who can't...