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> Despite widespread speculation, the possibility of the signals coming from an advanced alien civilization has been largely ruled out. Anyone know how?
by rhcom2 9y ago
> Despite widespread speculation, the possibility of the signals coming from an advanced alien civilization has been largely ruled out.
Anyone know how?
- revicon 9y agoI would guess mostly Occam's razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
- jerf 9y agoWhy would an alien civilization do this? And I don't just mean, come up with something that maybe some really powerful but really stupid alien civilization might conceivably do in a silly science fiction book. Explain how this is the best use of their still-limited power. Even the old standby "well maybe they're just incomprehensible and we can't understand them" doesn't really work here because when we're talking about "incomprehensible" aliens we don't usually mean that they're incomprehensible on account of being cosmically stupid and wasteful. (I am speaking about what we actually have evidence for. If there's multiple exabytes of incredible data packed into this signal somehow we have no evidence for it. I like to distinguish very clearly between "things based on the evidence that we have" and "airy flights of fancy based on what might be hiding in the gaps", on the grounds that the latter is unbounded, so while they are fun in stories, in a way the very unlimited nature of the possible sets of speculations makes them uninteresting as an analysis of the real universe, all equally lost in the noise of all the other fantastic possibilities.)
- rhcom2 9y agoI just thought "ruled out" makes it sound like they have some criteria for a "alien" signal vs natural.
- coldtea 9y agoWell, randomness (entropy of the singal etc) is a good criterion which doesn't require deciphering.
- dmurray 9y agoThese "signals" have less entropy than normal, which is what is interesting about them, so we have to come up with additional criteria here.
- coldtea 9y agoWell, simple periodic/repeating signals occur all the time in nature -- so it has to be more advanced than that to consider it an actual message or "intelligence made". Even if it was the Macarena beat it would hardly qualify as such.
- PoachedSausage 9y agoA variation on Clarke's 3rd law is: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature. So the origin could be such an advanced intelligence that it looks natural.
- sliken 9y agoMaybe because we already understand most of the physics required for space flight and the boring conclusion is that huge arrays of lasers are the most feasible way to accelerate an object to a fraction of light speed. Sure we can dream about FTL, but the physics support for that is minimal at best.
- adrianN 9y agoI'm reasonably sure that hydrogen bombs are the most feasible way to accelerate an object to ~0.03c. We know how to build bombs, and concepts for big-shock-absorber-with-bomb-shute spaceships looked feasible with the tech from 1960.
- sliken 9y agoSure, but how about 0.2c? Carrying your fuel with you has some pretty serious limitations for anything short of a fair chunk of your mass being anti-matter. However with the lasers you leave the fuel at home.
- maxerickson 9y agoIt appears to be few bytes. And probably not information. Still, I think being confident about what a civilization capable of sending an intergalactic signal is doing is a bit much. Maybe some kid was bored (and was throwing neutron stars into a black hole).
- kowdermeister 9y agoThere's also the possibility that FRB-s are artificial in its origin, but it's the byproduct of some technology we don't really grasp yet.
- magnat 9y ago> Explain how this is the best use of their still-limited power Weapon. I suppose you could ask the same question looking at our nuclear tests - why someone would waste so much energy in a single event? Maybe it's just remnants from their firing range?
- arethuza 9y agoOr an actual use of weapons.
- PoachedSausage 9y agoPerhaps they're celebrating the failed attempt by anarchist revolutionaries to cause the emperors home star to go nova.
- coldtea 9y ago>Explain how this is the best use of their still-limited power. Even the old standby "well maybe they're just incomprehensible and we can't understand them" doesn't really work here because when we're talking about "incomprehensible" aliens we don't usually mean that they're incomprehensible on account of being cosmically stupid and wasteful. Sorry, where did the idea of "still-limited power" came from? Or the idea that they're power constrained enough for this to be "wasteful"?
- jamesrcole 9y ago"Things we have evidence for" also includes our lack of a definitive understanding of physics and our lack of understanding of what life does or doesn't exist out there. That needs to be taken into account. You can't just assume the positive knowledge you currently have is representative of how things actually are.
- bwldrbst 9y agoTurns out it was just episodes of The Alien Bachelor?
- utunga 9y agoI'm sorry that nobody else in this thread seems to understand the meaning of the words "largely ruled out". I also would like to know why that is. Not saying it's aliens just saying I'd like to know the reasoning.
- visarga 9y agoDarn, I don't want to discover the aliens now! We're much closer to meeting AGI which is kind-of like an alien intelligence for us.
- 2_listerine_pls 9y agowe are aliens
- madshiva 9y ago"intelligence" cough cough
- fencepost 9y agoAmong other things, contemplate the energy requirements for producing a signal that we're picking up 3 billion light years away. Even if it's somewhat directional it's a huge energy output, as in "death of a small star" huge.
- madez 9y agoPhysics has many unanswered questions, and we can't rule out the possibility to generate energy equivalent to the death of a small star. My point is not just a formal nitpick. Everything, all the stars, all the matter, all the energy is there. Many orders of magnitude more than what we are talking about of stuff was created at least once, and we don't know how. Why would one rule out that it can be repeated? Maybe it can be repeated in smaller scale.
- simias 9y agoYou shouldn't completely rule it out, but you should apply occam's razor to try and guess the most likely cause for such an event. Looks like the scientists did that and largely ruled out this hypothesis. Of course as long as we don't figure out exactly what created this signal we can't be absolutely sure.
- jamesrcole 9y agoRather than taking a position, being agnostic seems more appropriate to me. We don't know. We don't know what physics may enable, we don't know if there's other life out there or what capabilities it might have. I don't see any need for coming down on a particular side, nor any solid evidence for doing so.
- simias 9y agoYou basically give up on science then. Maybe gravity doesn't work the way it does and it's just highly advanced aliens messing up with us. Maybe there's a teapot orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars. Maybe I'm actually an alien trying to confuse you so that you don't find the truth. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and all that.
- LoSboccacc 9y agoProbably because of the transmitting power involved, scaling it in favor of natural galaxy noise