In this short installment of Strange Columbus, we talk about the 1955 OSU Explosion that occurred early on the morning of Thursday, January 6th. The event happened at the War Research Building on Ohio State’s main campus. Half a pound of pyridine exploded during an experiment, though there were no injuries as the lab was unoccupied at the time of the explosion. The blast shattered four windows on the 2nd floor of the building, and generally caused a mess in the lab itself. However, because no fire occurred during the event, damage was described as light. Several pieces of lab equipment were sent to the Columbus Fire Department to be checked out for further danger, but the event was labeled a freak accident. It went unmentioned in the local news as to the nature of the experiment and why explosive materials were being used. The exact building this occurred in seems unclear, as old articles do not mention the location. Unfortunately, this event would be far from the last in terms of university lab accidents.
Columbus has far less explosive history to discover.
No, we’re not talking about being able to get HBO from the modern cable company. This signal had even worse consistency. On August 15, 1977, the Big Ear telescope– officially known as the Ohio State University Radio Observatory- recorded a surprisingly strong signal of non-terrestrial origin. At the time, the telescope was being utilized to search for signs of extraterrestrial life, a task that many large installations around the world had been occasionally involved in, with very little to show for the effort.
The observatory, located of of US 23 between Columbus and Delaware, had been working with SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) since 1973, after the installation had been deemed “defunct”. Equipment listening for frequencies would print out results on long sheets of paper, and while reviewing the data, the signal was first detected by astronomer Jerry Ehman at around 10:16PM. The readout featured the sequence 6EQEJ5, a combination that indicated frequency and signal intensity. The signal’s intensity was 30 standard deviations above normal background noise, and lasted for the full 72 seconds that the Big Ear was able to listen. Both the length and strength fell in line with expectations of what an alien signal would be like. Ehman was so shocked by it, that he circled the sequence and marked it with a “Wow!”, which is how the signal got its name.
The exact origin of the signal is even today unknown, but it was narrowed down to somewhere in the Sagittarius Constellation. Despite multiple attempts by the team at Big Ear, as well other other Earth-bound observatories to locate the signal again, they were unable to. This lack of repetition has meant that theories to its origin- either natural or otherwise- remain unconfirmed. Ehman himself was later skeptical of it actually coming from space and suggested it was signal from Earth that just happened to bounce off a satellite of some kind, but subsequent studies suggested this was highly unlikely.
For the next few decades, astronomers made multiple attempts to locate the signal again, but it was never heard again. To date, it remains one of the most mysterious space signals ever captured.
In 1997, the Big Ear ended all operations after 40 years of use. The following year, it was demolished to expand a golf course.
