What alphanumeric sequence captured Jerry Ehman’s attention on the printouts from the Big Ear telescope?
Answer
6EQUJ5
The specific sequence that astronomer Jerry Ehman circled and annotated with an exclamation point, leading to the event being branded the "Wow! signal," was the alphanumeric string 6EQUJ5. This notation was derived from the data printouts generated by the Big Ear radio telescope on August 15, 1977. The characters represented the measured intensity of the radio signal over the observation period. Specifically, the final digit, '5', indicated an extraordinarily high signal strength relative to the background noise measured by the instrument at that time.
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