It was a sweltering night in the middle of August 1977. Inside a small, quiet control room in Delaware, Ohio, the hum of machinery was the only sound breaking the silence. The Big Ear radio telescope scanned the heavens, its massive structure pivoting slowly across the sky. The astronomers on duty were used to the monotonous grind of numbers, patterns, and static—a never-ending search for something that most of them didn’t expect to find.

But that night, the cosmos had other plans.

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