The Tape in the Reservoir, the Letter, and the 2:17 Signal

The Tape in the Reservoir, the Letter, and the 2:17 Signal

Fear hits first: a reel-to-reel tape pulled from a catfish line, a radio telescope logging a pulse at 2:17 AM on the hydrogen line, and an unsigned letter sent weeks earlier all share the exact same eleven-symbol sequence - so why did each appear in a different place and time, and who sent them?

In this episode, we follow the sequence of events across three locations and several days, from Monica Boyd finding a half-soaked magnetic tape in a reservoir to Richard Wagner recording an anomalous signal at Verano Peak, and the mysterious mailed sheet that predated both. What connects the tape, the 2:17 detection, and the letter?

Person: Monica Boyd Person: Richard Wagner Location: Verano Peak Observatory Date: November 9, 2017 Event: Signal at 1410-1420 MHz (hydrogen line) detected at 2:17 AM and logged at 2:19 AM

- Monica Boyd pulled a reel-to-reel magnetic tape from a catfish line at 5:15 AM on November 9, 2017, forty-one miles from the nearest paved road. - The upper half of the tape was dry and the lower half soaking when Boyd found it; she drove to the Marta sheriff's substation before sunrise. - Richard Wagner, age forty-four and night-shift operator at Verano Peak Observatory, logged an anomalous signal on Dish Two at 2:19 AM after Dish Two registered it at 2:17 AM. - The signal repeated eleven times over the next forty minutes and matched an eleven-symbol sequence on a hand-drawn sheet mailed to Wagner weeks earlier. - The mailed envelope had no return address and contained eleven groups of short and long marks that matched a notation in a 2014 paper circulated to roughly four hundred specialists.

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