4 ms·
I've only read the article and not the research but that's because the article says the argument is simply: 1. The Wow! signal is intelligent in origin. 2. Th
by mellosouls 6y ago
I've only read the article and not the research but that's because the article says the argument is simply:
1. The Wow! signal is intelligent in origin.
2. This exoplanet system here is in an area the signal might have come from.
3. It looks a bit like our system so might have intelligent life.
This sounds like more of a moonshot for believers rather than a thoroughly scientific investigation.
- partisan 6y agoI found this article frustrating to read because of the lack of details, explanation, or attempts to educate the reader. Overall, it is just the reporting of speculation and nothing more. That said, I wonder if this is the type of news source we need. Anyone who wants further details can and should research the topic before drawing conclusions like the pre-baked ones we usually receive from our news sources.
- Uehreka 6y agoNah, I feel like “sources or GTFO”. If an article has a source then you can at least evaluate the claims yourself. But if the article is vague and doesn’t cite, then you have to look through science news or journals for things that “look like” they could’ve prompted the article, but you can’t be sure if you’ve found the actual source (which may be more or less substantive than the thing you do find).
- thesuitonym 6y ago>In his[Alberto Caballero] paper uploaded to the arXiv preprint server That looks like a citation to me. This isn't a defense of the article, which is bad for a variety of reasons. I'm just saying let's stick to what's true, rather than pretending they didn't cite a source just because they didn't have a hyperlink.
- benpanter 6y agoThe "paper" is here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.06090 https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.06090 but its analysis is not really something that you'd get published in an astronomy journal [speaking as a former professional astronomer]
- partisan 6y agoSorry to pry, but what does one do after a professional astronomy career?
- eecc 6y agoYou write Scala? (https://tpolecat.github.io https://tpolecat.github.io)
- Mountain_Skies 6y agoTrick Soviet hackers into thinking your government lab is doing research on space based weapons.
- codezero 6y agoFrom the labs I've worked in, I think the Russians would already know you weren't given the security of a lot of researchers' systems, maybe not national labs/NASA, but I even did some work at Goddard Space Flight Center and it was an ancient lab that definitely had live internet Ethernet wires here and there that systems were plugged into doing... stuff.
- codezero 6y agoI did a lot of data processing, and about 1/4 of the year was grant proposals.
- unixhero 6y agoAll (two) of the astronomers I know became fat, lazy, well paid engineers with a wife, house and garden, picket fence, doing programming and engineering at a multinational company. Sigh, I had such high hopes.
- marcosdumay 6y agoIt's missing a link. The article directly references a paper, but gives no way to unambiguously locate it. That's not a source, it's an open invitation to research.
- satisfaction 6y agoTo quote the article directly: "Caballero reasoned that if the source was some other life form, it would likely be living on an exoplanet.." The author does not claim the signal is intelligent.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoBut then he only found a possible source if the signal is intelligent. He did not find a natural astronomical phenomenon in that system that could be the source.