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An Interesting SETI Candidate in Hercules
- f2f 10y agoGreat, another wow signal! Now we can rest easy that the first one wasn't a fluke... Regardless of whether this is the making of sentients or a physical phenomena we have one more reason to keep looking up in the sky :) here's a good description of the wow signal and why it's important. if this one has similar characteristics we just increased chances of observing a really interesting phenomena by 100%: http://www.universetoday.com/93754/35-years-later-the-wow-signal-still-tantalizes/ http://www.universetoday.com/93754/35-years-later-the-wow-si...
- okket 10y agoDon't get carried away like with Tabetha's Star and the alien megastructures a few months ago... http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-blogs/cosmic-relief-david-grinspoon/could-it-be-possible-signs-of-e-t-intelligence/ http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-blogs/cosmic-relief...
- TheOtherHobbes 10y agoQuite a lot has happened since then. https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.01316 https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.01316
- jamroom 10y agoWhy not? "Getting carried away" is the fun part :)
- bjd2385 10y agoThe nonsense that looms in this story's wake is sickening. I couldn't even finish the article. It's nothing more than an attention-grabber. Funding comes from public support, so as long as astronomers and writers capture the imagination and attention/awareness of the public, i.e. looking up, the more relevant and important the `dry` research underneath will appear in Congress, or to those overseeing grants, etc.
- pmoriarty 10y agoWhat fraction of the science funding goes to SETI?
- foobarbecue 10y agoExactly 0. Nevada Senator Richard Bryan killed federal funding for SETI (which used to be under NASA) in 1993. Now it is funded entirely by donations. http://www.seti.org/faq#obs6 http://www.seti.org/faq#obs6
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- eggy 10y agoI want to be first to pilot the machine Herculeans are sending in code for us to build just like in the movie 'Contact'!
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jcoffland 10y agoGreat it's actually very similar to a machine featured in South Park.
- LyndsySimon 10y agoOh well - it's still better than dealing with the TSA.
- hoodoof 10y agoIt says it could be a Kardashian Type II civilization. Scary thought.
- ainar-g 10y agoI think you meant "Kardashev". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale Unless this was a Kim Kardashian joke.
- hoodoof 10y agoOh I must have read it wrong. I thought the scientists theorized about the existence of civilizations evolved entirely from a single Kardashian genome. The only thing I wondered about is what the difference would be between type I and type II Kardashian civilizations.
- okket 10y agoAnd at some point a sub group split off and called themselves Cardassians. Everything makes sense now...
- dustinls 10y ago> The only thing I wondered about is what the difference would be between type I and type II Kardashian civilizations. A type I Kardashian civilization would find it impossible to keep up with a type II Kardashian civilization.
- dogma1138 10y agoYou are correct although the sentence still holds true any type of a Kardashian civilization would be a scary thought indeed.
- stephengillie 10y agoIsn't it possible the bipeds of a high gravity planet would require larger lower-body muscles for walking around? Maybe the planet is especially hilly.
- adrianratnapala 10y agoThe article talks about the frequency and strength of the signal but I didn't spot anything about its structure. What is it about this signal that is supposed to make it seem (possibly) unnatural?
- mysterypie 10y agoI second this question. Unless the signal is encoding the digits of pi or something, I don't understand why it's so interesting.
- cantrevealname 10y agoI expect that it is tantalizing for the same reason as the "Wow!" signal: "First, ["Wow!" signal] did appear to be an artificial radio signal, rather than a natural radio emission such as a pulsar or quasar. The Big Ear telescope used a receiver with 50 radio channels; the signal was only heard on one frequency, with no other noise on any of the other channels. A natural emission would cause static to appear on all of the frequencies, and this was not the case. The signal was narrow and focused, as would be expected from an artificial source." "The signal also “rose and fell” during the 72 seconds, as would be expected from something originating in space. When the radio telescope is pointed at the sky, any such signal will appear to increase in intensity as it first moves across the observational beam of the telescope, then peak when the telescope is pointed straight at it and then decrease as it moves away from the telescope. This also makes a mere computer glitch a less likely explanation, although not impossible." Source: http://www.universetoday.com/93754/35-years-later-the-wow-signal-still-tantalizes/ http://www.universetoday.com/93754/35-years-later-the-wow-si...
- mateiz 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hercules_Text https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hercules_Text
- kabdib 10y agoGreat book, except for the bit about being able to boot an Apple ][ with a binary from a SETI download. [I've often wondered what a computer and OS designed by an extraterrestrial civilization would look like. But it's impossible to for just us to project our own systems out any reasonable amount of time. It's unclear that we'll even have keyboards and displays 100 years from now, or that we'll have replaced C with something better <-- troll :-) ]
- jen729w 10y agoFor all of Independence Day's faults, I couldn't forgive the fact that Will Smith flew up to the alien mother ship and plugged in a USB key (containing the virus which destroyed the ship (er, spoiler)).
- flukus 10y agoThat's because all of our tech was based off the roswell crash, that's the hand wavy way of explaining the compatibility. That and a telepathic species can afford to be complacent on internal security. The one I can't forgive is the aliens having telepathy in the first place. So much sci fi has this and it ruins the story for me as much as it would if a wizard showed up.
- nsxwolf 10y agoWhy not a telepathy consistent with physics? Electromagnetic radiation emitted into the brain of a recipient and whatnot.
- flukus 10y agoFor one, I've never seen the telepathy be interfered with by other electromagnetic radiation or anyone build a faraday cage to limit the communication. Telepathy goes right through the deflector shield in star trek.
- obvio171 10y agoI was expecting SETI to find intelligence on Earth before space. They've been looking at the entropy of bee hives and other disembodied signal-passing collectives for a while now.
- rbanffy 10y agoThey are smart, but can't do miracles.
- jloughry 10y agoTIL the unit of amplitude, mJy, refers to Janskys [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jansky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jansky
- sevenless 10y agoI always thought optical SETI makes more sense. With relatively inexpensive lasers we can send an extremely bright message, vastly outshining our sun, to every star within a few thousand light years. Surely that's how you'd say 'We're here' to aliens. http://seti.harvard.edu/oseti/ http://seti.harvard.edu/oseti/
- xyzzy123 10y agoSending seems a lot more risky than receiving.
- sevenless 10y agoRisky for what? Alien invasion? If interstellar travel were that easy or worthwhile they'd be here already, especially what with terrestrial radio broadcasts.
- xyzzy123 10y agoIf your argument is that terrestrial radio broadcasts mean we don't need the laser... then why do we need the laser? Re: interstellar invasion, perhaps not, but hard to rule out the possibility that the response we get to our broadcasts is something like a relativistic projectile.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jcoffland 10y agoThe universe is a big place and we are a tiny planet. It's very likely we could remain unseen even in a highly active interstellar community. Announcing our presence could have consequences, or not.
- sandworm101 10y agoI'm not sure we could hit another star. They aren't stationary, at least not on the timescales needed for communication. We'd probably be ok out a few dozen light-years, but beyond that would require some trek-level 'stellar cartography' to predict both where the target will be in a thousand years and how our outbound light beam will interact with gravity on the way. And the fact that we don't really know where the target star is today but where it was a thousand years ago.
- mercurialshark 10y agoThis is possibly exciting. Its metallicity is almost identical to that of the Sun. If hypothetically it were the best case scenario, something broadcasted by a sentient being, then the position that the universe simply isn't old enough to be densely populated becomes a lessor issue. Considering that our sun is a third or fourth generation star, based on its metallicity/age and if heavier elements are necessary for advanced civilizations to evolve - it's possible that the intergalactic space race is only just beginning.
- flukus 10y ago>This is possibly exciting. Its metallicity is almost identical to that of the Sun. That and being 0.99 solar masses. If we were going to send messages out to the universe picking sun like stars would be a sensible choice.
- bsdetector 10y agoOn the other hand if this was just some hiccup in the star, doesn't that mean the sun could fry us at any moment?
- perplexes 10y agoIs there a recording of the signal available anywhere?