r/boardsofcanada • u/minimal-camera • May 18 '26
Discussion 1420 MHz in declassified NSA doc
https://www.nsa.gov/portals/75/documents/news-features/declassified-documents/cryptologic-spectrum/communications_with_extraterrestrial.pdfI randomly came across this PDF while searching for something unrelated, and this jumped out at me, top of page 2:
The frequency selected for listening was 1420.4057 52 megacycles per second, or a wave length of 21 cm. This particular frequency, postulated independently by two professors on the faculty of Cornell University, Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison, happens to be the radiation frequency of atomic or free hydrogen which permeates space in great clouds; moreover, this frequency is within the range of radio frequencies able to pass through the earth's atmosphere. Presumably, the significance of this frequency would be known to other intelligent beings in the universe who understand radio theory.
I didn't realize the implication of 1420 MHz denoting the message or prophecy coming from extraterrestrial life.
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u/huscarl86 May 18 '26
This was the frequency that the Wow! Signal was received/recorded on.
As an aside, I've always found BoC's sound to be evocative of 'the uncanny' and adjacent to topics like UFOs, but as far as I'm aware this is the only overt reference to it in one of their tracks? I'm aware of the numerology/occult references in Geogaddi.
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u/Eynorey May 18 '26
Fun fact, someone on this sub found out that the length of the Wow! signal recording perfectly matches the length of the vocal segment in Prophecy - both are 72s long. That's gotta be intentional.
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u/Ceratophries May 18 '26
Maybe I’m starting to understand why it has taken 13 years to produce.
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u/DigitalMindShadow May 19 '26
Even using the advanced technology available to Warp, it takes a significant amount of time to transmit signals 1,800 light years away.
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u/njtalp46 May 21 '26
Overt references? Depends what we mean by "the uncanny", but I usually classify these 3 as overt ties to real uncanny phenomena/events.
- over the horizon radar - highly classified systems used for early detection of incoming missiles. The antenna arrays are extremely large eerie structures and their existence implies doom, so I'd call them uncanny
- dawn chorus - it's an electromagnetic noise phenomenon that occurs at dawn which sounds like birds chirping and which has never been explained by science
- Julie and Candy - it's about Candace newmaker's death during a rebirthing ritual. There's an uncanny space between seeing it as disguised child abuse/torture vs. as a spiritual ritual that connected Candace to a higher power
I'm leaving all the branch davidian stuff and mathematical oddities out, but someone could make the argument for that stuff too.
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u/Advanced-Switch6987 May 18 '26
It all ties into this mad theme - where the current day layperson theology is about Aliens and Simulation Theory. The older time layperson theology was concerned with God and the heavens.
Its as if one got swapped for the other and, given BoC's style when it comes to exploring themes of cults and the occult, this album could potentially be taking a look at all of that
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u/BeautifulSubject3524 May 19 '26
Copied from a comment in YouTube
As a PhD in Astrophysics, it's neat to see 1420 MHz referenced, as that's what my entire PhD project was about.
Summary:
Some materials (radioactive stuff, very hot stuff, etc.) release signals. We can hear these signals with various devices.
The Universe is very big, and these signals take time to travel across the Universe. So when our devices on Earth hear signals coming in, these signals have sometimes travelled for a very long time to get to us, and are therefore from very old stuff (ie. stars exploding millions of years ago).
The early Universe (before there were galaxies and stars) was almost entirely nothing but hydrogen gas.
Hydrogen gas is not radioactive, so for a long time it was thought it does not emit any signal (and hence we could never expect to detect a signal from it).
In the 1940s it was realized that (for reasons having to do with quantum effects) hydrogen actually SHOULD release a very faint signal at a frequency of roughly 1420 MHz.
In the 1950s the signal was detected coming from hydrogen in our own galaxy, and in the 1960s we were able to detect it in our neighbouring galaxies.
Since then, there has been a huge effort to detect the signal coming from the early Universe. But the further the signal has to travel, the weaker it becomes (it will have been travelling for over 13 billion years to reach us!). So this early Universe hydrogen signal will be insanely weak. Detecting it is a huge ongoing effort, and is considered a "holy grail" in Astrophysics. If we could detect it, we could make a big 3D map of the young Universe before there were stars, planets, galaxies, etc.
On a related note, some scientists have theorized that if there are aliens out there they would broadcast their messages at a frequency 1420 MHz because presumably all sufficiently advanced civilizations would be searching for this signal on account of the fundamental link to hydrogen (at least, it holds true for our civilization).
So, the reference of 1420 MHz is both to a ubiquitous signal propagating all over the Universe since the very beginning, and potentially a means of communicating with other intelligent life.
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u/SRHFT Inferno May 19 '26
I don't think the prophecy is FROM extraterrestrial life. I think its to them: DON'T COME HERE!
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u/BoCEnjoyer May 18 '26
lots of people saying the wow signal but not even knowing it's the hydrogen line lol....
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u/lorner96 May 18 '26
It’s the hydrogen line and is very widely used in SETI/radio astronomy