The WOW! Mystery (Are we alone in this vast universe?)

It’s a clear starry night on the eve of the Indian festival of Holi. The astronomers at the GMRT, Pune are trying to sneak past the atmosphere. Even today, without any clouds, it is refracting light from distant celestial objects while hurting the observation of the beautiful night sky. Tonight, anybody could sneak into their office. They were preoccupied with the heavens, looking for a bizarre signal that had been troubling them for a long time.

This particular signal is of immense priority to these astronomers because it seems familiar. Let’s travel back in time to the 1970s, the era in which wow! signal was discovered. Studies on this mysterious radio wave suggested that it came from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius in close proximity to the star tau Sagittarii.

The origins of this enigmatic signal are unascertained to date. Several scientists believe wow! Was a message from an extraterrestrial civilisation. Now in 2021, phase congruency methods show that the two signals are indeed the same! Something more baffling is happening this time. The signal reappears every week. This has been happening for several weeks now. Each time the signal is the same, but the information contained is different. Still, even after four decades decoding the entire signal is not an easy endeavour for humans. The novel signal emanates from a nebula within the Sagittarius. That’s what the last message contained. The question is which one of the nebulae in Sagittarius. That’s what astronomers are trying, but luck hasn’t found them, and it is almost time for the next signal! Hence the atmosphere at the observatory is quite intricate, somewhat between that of elation and tension among fellow researchers.

Even the telescope has been enchanted by the air but not in a very good way. The main cable connecting the database servers caught fire due to the intense load. Luckily, the fire had been controlled well in time. The upcoming signal had been missed because the astronomers searched for two days but failed. The last resort is to manually come up with a process to scrutinise and decide which nebula to look out for first. Following a long scientific meeting, it was agreed that Lagoon Nebula makes the most sense. Having the highest density of G-type stars similar to the sun. Being an emission nebula, Lagoon seems to be an ideal preference. The G-type comes from the Hurtzsprung Russell (HR) Diagram aka “The Stellar Encyclopedia”. The HR Diagram is essentially a plot between stellar luminosities / absolute magnitude and their temperature. The plot enables us to classify stars based on their spectral classes which fall broadly under three categories. Namely: Giants and supergiants; Main Sequence and white dwarfs. Soon, GMRT was healthy again to begin the new endeavour. To seek for sun-like stars and their systems confided in the boundaries of the Lagoon Nebula with possible signs of life. However, prior to this, there are some concepts that one must gear up with. What is the possibility of life exotic to our solar system? And what kind of life are we expecting to discover? Well, these are just a handful of questions humans have been trying to answer for centuries. Consequently, the process has taken a formal form and is now professionally known as astrobiology. Several theories and conjectures have been established by scientists. The Fermi Paradox raises the question “Where is everybody?” while Drake’s equation gives a possible solution to this question. Drake’s equation is basically a probabilistic approach which considers various factors: rate of star formation, the proportion of stars with planets and a whole lot of logical and technical factors which leads to a whopping 15 million civilizations within the milky way itself! That’s why astronomers at GMRT are exuberated by the wow!. And now after weeks of staring at that colourful patch in the sky, the time has come for the data to be revealed.

The findings could have been delayed because GMRT alone could not solve the mystery of the mysterious radiation. The newly launched James Webb Space Telescope, a dedicated scientific instrument which can easily pierce through the gas clouds of the nebula to reveal what lies beyond. It did its job fairly well for now the chief scientist at GMRT is all set for the press conference to reveal what the colourful clouds of the Lagoon are hiding. She unveils a piece of breathtaking news! “The collaborative research between JWST and GMRT has worked out well. We are pleased to announce that a stellar system, much similar to our own, has been identified within the Lagoon nebula. Housing a main sequence star with a family of six planets, there is a special among them where photosynthetic signatures have been identified! We are sure that life is thronging in the Sagittarius!”

Story by: Aviral Srivastava

Illustration poster: Bristi Paul