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Post by Deleted on Oct 17, 2016 18:21:30 GMT -6
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Post by Deleted on Oct 28, 2016 5:03:14 GMT -6
Is That An Alien Signal? Please Answer On A Scale Of 1 To 10
By Rebecca Boyle Astrobiology, the search for life beyond Earth, has moved from the fringes to the forefront of science in recent years. Last month, NASA announced with great fanfare that Europa, a watery moon of Jupiter, is spurting fluid into space that a spacecraft may be able to sample and analyze for signs of microbes. Last week, a spacecraft arrived at Mars to sniff out atmospheric methane, which could indicate life’s processes. And telescopes on Earth and in space continue looking out across the universe, where sunlike stars might briefly shine their light through the atmospheres of Earth-like planets, illuminating chemicals that could tell us whether life is present. Looking for little green microbes is no longer considered silly; it’s cutting edge. Meanwhile, alien hunting, commonly referred to as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, is still very much relegated to the sidelines. A small, not well-funded, particularly obsessive group of astronomers has continued the search for alien communication nonetheless. Occasionally, promising signals make their way through the broader astronomical community and into the public eye. A few such claims have made headlines recently, prompting some astronomers to call for a new framework to rank and interpret these signals. CONTINUE READING HERE : fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-that-an-alien-signal-please-answer-on-a-scale-of-1-to-10/Sometimes one has to ask :
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Post by plutronus on Nov 11, 2016 10:19:53 GMT -6
Cliff, Thanks for the vote of confidence, I hope I can live up to your expectations...:) Ok, I down loaded the paper and read through a lot of it, but not all. The authors are citing things to which I have neither the time to lookup, or even more likely, understand. As best as I understand things, they layout a theme of what they anticipate as being a likely, non-natural signal that is being 'beamed' (radiated) from a relatively narrow region area of space (10º here can be 100 trillion light-years-wide out there) while in the scheme of reality it is way-the-f-out-there. The reference to the signal-to-noise-ratio is simply a way to gain a relative to all the samples in a set, easily quantifiable 'quick-look' at power density (in this case) of remotely located signal sources. There are many noise sources out there in vast expanses of space and the signal of interest must both be detectable and identifiable amongst that noise. If the two power-levels of 1) the signal of interest, and that of the noise-signal are close in magnitude, it can be difficult to easily see. Re; the signals, they make the claim that the signal 'structure' meets a previously defined and predicted form of a likely, non-natural (eg, not generated by natural processes), intelligently alien signal generation. I have recently read Kip Thorn's (foreward by Stephen Hawking) excellent "Black Holes & Time Warps - Einstein's Outrageouss Legacy". I recommend to those folks who are interested to know the way of things without experiencing severe brain-burnout, to this fantastic expose of the history of physics, astro-physics and theoretical physics, and in that journey, one learns a bit about how the fabric of reality is comprised. However my point in bringing this up, and having finally been able to wrap my brain around the significance of what astro-physicists are actually seeing in the distant galaxies regarding the behaviors of black holes, neutron stars, magnetars and multiple binary stars swinging around one and another at nearly the speed of light, it is not inconsistant to be able to speculate that such and some other combinations could synthesize 1.65 pico-second electromagnetic radiation bursts. In fact I suspect that is what will eventually be found to be the source of those strangely periodic radiation bursts. The fact that there are 234 of them and so widely separated from each other, is highly suspiscious in my mind. While I am not a physicist, I do think I have some reasonable perceptions about how things are. The paper authors' claim is that due to the periodocity and the 'shortness' of the signal is likely a non-natural signal. However, why would a group of aliens, located light-years apart send exactly the same signals which suggests collective mission co-ordination? If they are capable of collectively coordinating such an effort, why not just come visit us? If indeed are actually alien, apparently 'they' are able to communicate with each other, at very vast distances to one and another, which suggests that they are all the same specis (they are able to adequately convey complex technical details of the 'mission' to one and another, if not the same specis how are they able to do so?) or they have visited each of the 234 collective mission sites. So again, if they can accomplish that, why not just come visit us? The problem with guessing, is one can be dead flat wrong.... enough babbling I'll comment later on the SETI babblers comments...its amazing how stupid smart people can be.
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