The Signal Archive

On August 15, 1977, a 72-second radio burst arrived at the Big Ear Observatory. It matched every hallmark of an intentional extraterrestrial transmission. Nearly 50 years later, we still don't know what it was.

When Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered a signal pulsing with mechanical precision in 1967, she and her supervisor briefly considered one impossible answer: Little Green Men.

In 1964, two Bell Labs engineers discovered an ancient signal: the universe's oldest light, still traveling toward us after 13.8 billion years.

Discovered in archival data in 2007, Fast Radio Bursts are the brightest radio transients we know. Some repeat. Most remain unexplained.

In 2020, a radio signal from Proxima Centauri triggered months of intense analysis—then turned out to be Earth-based interference. Here's why that failure was science at its finest.

In 1932, a Bell Labs engineer chasing static on the radio accidentally detected emissions from the Milky Way's center. He did not know he was inventing radio astronomy.

Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 is 15 billion miles away and still transmitting. NASA's Deep Space Network is listening, and its signal takes over 22 hours to arrive.