Steven Poole

A surprising number of scientists believe in little green men

Eminent astronomers have explained cosmic anomalies as alien megastructures and spaceships, while the source of the celebrated Wow! signal remains anyone’s guess

[Getty Images] 
issue 04 May 2024

In 1928, a young physicist and engineer named Karl Jansky began working at Bell Telephone Laboratories, tasked with investigating any sources of static that could interfere with long-distance radio communication. Cobbling together a system of antennae on a merry-go-round, he successfully found that thunderstorms were annoying in just this way.

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