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Now that was no wow. A strong signal from space that got heard by Big Ear radio telescope in 1977 was picked up by astronomers from the Ohio State University. It was the "first encounter with an alien broadcast", speculated New Scientist.

That was called the "Wow!" signal that had been found when a portion of the radio spectrum looking like hydrogen was focused on.

Still, that theory was a damp squib, says a new theory, explaining that it began from a pair of comets that just looked in curiously on the earth and passed it by, according to Antonio Paris, an astronomer from St. Petersburg College.

The signals were produced by a couple of comets with the strange names of 266P/Christensen and P/2008 Y2. They release huge amounts of hydrogen when they pass the sun. When they whizzed past in the solar system, they were most probably disrupted by ultraviolet rays. It led to the release of a hydrogen cloud that lengthened through miles.

Still, there are some scientists who want to still wow the signal. James Bauer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains that he is "unsure" if the comet's hydrogen clouds would have had the strength to create the mystical Wow! Signal, according to the Daily Mail.

"If comets were radio-bright at 21 centimetres, I would be puzzled as to why they aren't observed more often at those wavelengths," he said.

The 266P/Christensen comet will be passing the same regions in January 2017 and P/2008 Y2 will be hitting the spot in January 2018.

"The hypothesis must be tested before it is ruled out," he said.

The study will appear in the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences.