EDUPA: Space Noises

The Problem:
Unlike my last post on the three body problem, this will deal more with two particular mysteries rather than a more general case of astrophysics problems. This post will focus on the well-known "WOW!" signal and the lesser known "Space Roar" signal.

The story of the "WOW!" signal is fairly well known. In 1977 the Big Ear radio telescope picked up a particularly strong radio signal coming from a point of deep space that seemed to contain no terrestrial bodies.  It was large enough to be ruled out of any particular error or human interaction, and almost all theories of foul play have been ruled out. It is essentially a signal that came from a completely unknown source, and people have tried for a while to find it again.

The more recent and more obscure "Space Roar" signal was presented in 2009. Essentially, it came out as a loud, low frequency noise that appeared about six times the normal background noise coming from a similar patch of sky. Again, it is an unexplained radio signal coming from space which appears to unexplained.

The Physics:
Since noise can't travel through space, astrophysicists will often search for peculiarities in the electromagnetic signals that can travel great distances to our planet. This is the same method through which we might find variances in gravity, shifts in creation of stars, and much more. The Big Ear "telescope" did just that. During its six years of active operation, it spun as the earth did in order to gather data from various points of space. it was essentially one way to map out the universe. This same method may be used to pick up on radio wavelengths of things which fail to emit visible light, as well: looking at high energy sources such as pulsars or quasars.

Why does it matter?
Aliens (Maybe). Many theorists (and some non-theorists) have suggested that the WOW signal is evidence of extraterrestrial beings. This, of course, is impossible to prove or disprove; however there are equally as many other astronomical events which might produce a similar signal. Even though scientists have passed over the spot many times with similar equipment as a direct result of finding the signal, they have found no evidence of a repeated signal.

The Space Roar signal could have more interesting applications, however. The effect of the radiation from a space like this could be useful in the description of some of the universes earliest stars. This may obscure scientists ability to detect radiation from remnants of first generation stars.

Who is going to solve it?
The WOW signal has long since passed, and the source of the signal might very well not be where it was when we saw it. On top of that, the Big Ear telescope has been dismantled since the mid seventies so we can not repeat the experiment itself. Although on searching this I did find many forums dedicated to tearing apart the details in order to find extraterrestrial life, so there is always that.

The Space Roar puzzle might be something more pertinent to modern astrophysics however. The fact that this signal was much stronger than anything previously expected, but it is a repeatable measurement actually indicates that there are fundamental truths at play here. As such, a team at JPL is currently tackling the problem, but no new results have been published since 2010 from the main team.

What I think:
There are proponents who mumble something about dark energy on every comment section as I looked through this problem, but I wouldn't know much about that. I say that there is solid evidence that both can be summed up as the remnant energy of a cosmic event that we are incapable of detecting.

Sources:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2009/arcade_balloon.html
http://www.space.com/6293-mystery-roar-faraway-space-detected.html
http://www.astronomytoday.com/astronomy/radioastro.html