SETI Finds Interesting Signal

Several readers sent in notes about an interesting signal discovered by SETI. No real evidence of Someone Out There, but not fully explainable either. Another reader submits a blurb suggesting that aliens should send spacemail, not signals: "Rutgers electrical engineering professor, Christopher Rose, has an article on Nature magazine's cover today describing the most efficient way for our civilization to be discovered by aliens. On this question of better to 'write or radiate', his conclusions: better not to send radio transmission, when physical media like DNA on an asteroid can declare a terrestrial presence. Similar to what motivated Voyager scientists to attach a plaque for the outbound trip. Rose has some great information payload sizes as examples (like the entire information equivalent for our global genome fitting on a 100 pound laptop!)."

Coral Cache Ineffective

Here is an article that is un-slashdotted [scotsman.com] as of 0057 Universal Time.

Don't be scared

I know scotsman.com looks fishy, but it's not a troll link, folks. It's news.scotsman.com, Scotland's national newspaper online. It's not a troll. I'll bet my karma on it. :)

Re:Coral Cache Ineffective

"Here is an article that is un-slashdotted as of 0057 Universal Time. "

You foolish humans and your 'universal' time. We from Persei Omicron 8 will smash you for your arrogance!

Re:I for one...

I for one welcome our new enigmatic radio-emitting hydrogen gas clouds.

Decode.c: the signal decoded says...

Hello Baltzar, Great news! No intelligent life on third planet, but I just saved a bundle on my space-car insurance. Tell the Gecko we'll be over for dinner, 10-4, over-and-out, later buddy, Bizstar84!zirc (no spam) nept.com

Re:I for one...

I for one welcome our new intelligent extra terrestrial overlords!

Did I miss something or is it the first time the overlords are supposed to be intelligent?
That might be something to welcome indeed.

Waste of time

No one's gunna pay attention to us until we have warp drive anyway.

Re:Waste of time

and then it will be some boring pointy eared guys with no sense of humor and alien chicks who are never in the mood

Re:Waste of time

But at least the world will know of logical women.

Re:Waste of time

Sorry, but Vulcan women, and in fact Vulcans in general, aren't logical, they're just stoic. If they were really logical, they'd realize that logic can only be applied in situations where one has reliable axioms, which excludes the vast majority of all common situations (I say this as a math major). Furthermore, I'd wager that in cases where one doesn't have enough information to make a "logical" decision, it's usually much wiser to follow one's emotions.

Since the Vulcans are too dumb to figure this stuff out and follow a philosophy we abandoned that hit its peak and quickly declined about two thousand years ago, I'd say that they are too dumb to have actually created warp technology on their own and they must have just stolen the technology from another civilization.

Re:Waste of time

===GEEK ALERT=== (You have been warned)

The original series specfically addressed Vulcan "logic" as more of an unemotional state. Their idea is to make a decision based on rational thinking, utilizing the facts at their disposal. The Vulcans/Surak felt they must follow such a course because their powerful emotions were destroying their society.

Furthermore, I'd wager that in cases where one doesn't have enough information to make a "logical" decision, it's usually much wiser to follow one's emotions.

Actually, that was sort of the point of Kirk and Spock's relationship. Spock tempered Kirk's impulses, while Kirk showed Spock that emotions can be a valuable asset when making decisions.

Since the Vulcans are too dumb to figure this stuff out and follow a philosophy we abandoned that hit its peak and quickly declined about two thousand years ago, I'd say that they are too dumb to have actually created warp technology on their own and they must have just stolen the technology from another civilization.

Have you been watching Enterprise? Those aren't Vulcans! They're dumbasses in robes and bowl cuts POSING as Vulcans! I'm willing to bet that they're really aliens created by future guy to slow down human development! The real Vulcans were shang-hied by future guy before they met Cochrane! Or maybe Enterprise just sucks. Hmm...
===/GEEK ALERT===

Putting the technobabble aside for a moment, the Vulcans were a plot device that Roddenbery used to explore the human condition. It's quite common in writing to take a human trait to an extreme or remove it so as to use the contrast to better explore the attribute. In the case of Star Trek, the "emotional" vs. "unemotional" contrast allowed the strengths and weaknesses of each approach to become obvious.

Get a life, you people

You there, you must be almost thirty. Have you ever kissed a girl?

Re:Waste of time

Sooo, do you think you have enough information to make a logical decision to use your emotions? If you don't have enough infomration to make semi-logical choices for the majority of common situtaion, then perhaps you haven't thought about those situations enough.

Emotions were usefull in primitive society. Now, they often get you in trouble more than anything. Take anger. People following this emotion has led to road rage, killings, beatings, many firings, bad customer service, etc etc etc. Take love, people do SO many stupid things because of love. You think people would learn from these stupid things, but no. They do not. Or take greed.

If there is a lack of information avaliable, the logical thing to do is to try to FIND information. Not fall back on primitive emotions.

Perhaps what you are referring to are situations involving ethics. Where logic is perhaps too *harsh* to be applied. In these situations it is indeed wiser to follow one's emotions. But not because of a lack of information. Rather, because we are still quite primitive as a species. Regardless of what we think of ourselves, many of our actions are not at all logical, nor are the smart, or wise, or anything of the like. As a result, being logical in ALL situations will quickly get you branded a lunatic, heritic, insenstive, immoral, or any number of other derogatory terms.

Humans still incredibly stupid. We all simply have a HUGE ego problem.

Re:Waste of time

Applying logic to maximise your own gains would be very bad - that's why we have emotions, so that we try to maximise the gains for everyone. (Consider the prisoners' dilema)

Re:Waste of time

If you want to be analytical, tell me where emotions come from.

My thinking is that your brain is aggregating and analyzing data in quantities too large for your conscious thought (ration/logic/analysis/thought, whatever you want to call it) to keep up with. Take someone throwing a ball at you. To plot coordinates and calculate trajectory with your conscious mind would take far too long for you to catch it in real time. But you've got "lower" brain functions that can handle those calculations fast enough to be useful.

I think of it like ASICs (Application Specifc Integrated Circuits - think graphics cards and network switches) vs. CPUs. Your "higher brain" can think up new stuff and analyze situations that your instincts don't recognize. But your "higher brain" is goddamn slow by comparison. So netiher one is "better" or "more correct", they're just suited for different situations.

As for "If there is a lack of information avaliable, the logical thing to do is to try to FIND information", that doesn't work. For last resorts, go back to DesCartes - you can't prove anything 100%, because you can't even trust your own senses 100%.

If you don't like my extreme example, I'll pick something more moderate. Watch Law and Order. When you look at a real life (yes, I know it's a fictional show, but it's a good model) you get the impression that it's almost impossible to prove something 100%, especially when you're being opposed. "Go get more proof" is not a valid approach, because there is a limit to the amount of information you can actually get. To get anything done, you eventually have to make a decision based on the information you have, and those decisions are often messy.

In addition to those theoretical limits, there's a time factor. To steal a quote from the military mindset: "It's better to make a good decision now than the best decision later." Real life happens in real time, and delays cost you. Emotions analyze available input way faster than logic does, and most things operate on time constraints. So emotions will often serve you better than analysis, especially in situations where time is short and information is limited.

To call emotions "primitive" is, I belive, a primitive characterization of important workings of the human mind.

Re:Waste of time

If they were really logical, they'd realize that logic can only be applied in situations where one has reliable axioms, which excludes the vast majority of all common situations (I say this as a math major).

You say this as a math major who needs to do one of a) get his money back, b) pay more attention, or c) transfer to a better school.

Ok, that was harsh. You won't find a better school anywhere, so I guess it's not your fault.

Logic isn't a field of study that began in mathematics - it's a field of philosophy, specifically in epistemology (the study of how we come to know things). Actual logic is the doctrine that our ideas, to be correct, must conform to reality. That is, ideas must be derived from reality primarily by observation and by processes which are themselves derived from the actual relationships amongst actual things in the physical world (again, observation). Logic most specifically does not start with axioms from which all other knowledge is then derived.

Yeah, that philosophy was abandoned about two thousand years ago - and look what replaced it: the Dark Ages. If it hadn't been for Thomas Aquinas re-introducing that philosophy through the works of Aristotle, we might never have recovered from abandoning those oh-so-declined ideas.

Re:Waste of time

As CBG from the Simpsons says:

Inspired by the most logical race in the galaxy, the Vulcans, breeding will be permitted once every seven years. For many of you this will mean much less breeding, for me, much much more.

--Pat / [e-mail]

Re:Waste of time

You know you're obsessed with Star Trek when you do what the parent post suggests... and you call cops "Klingons".

Re:Waste of time

I just hate it when the Klingons have their cloaking turned on and look like shrubs on the side of the road...

Re:Waste of time

Rose has some great information payload sizes as examples (like the entire information equivalent for our global genome fitting on a 100 pound laptop!).

Great while we're at it, let's also send them a Macintosh floppy disk. To make it fun, nobody tell them if its big or little endian. Anyone in the universe up for some GACTAGATTGAC?

DNA Over Signal

When dealing with the vastness of space, how can you advocate physical over transmission. The article does nothing to describe why sending an object with mass 1/1000000 the size of a planet that we would notice is somehow preferable to trying to boost a signal.

Re:DNA Over Signal

Because the laws of physics - most specifically the inverse square law - work against the transmission of electromagnetic energies over vast distances. Isn't efficiency the pinnacle of any advanced civilization?

Re:DNA Over Signal

1/r^2 stands true for all electromagnetic waves. That means the intensity of the signal will decrease by the square of its distance.

Re:DNA Over Signal

If the emissions are parallel...

Lasers aren't actually parallel. They are diffraction limited. The smaller the collimation the more quickly they diverge. A big diameter laser can have a lower divergence, but then the energy density is also lower. And still, over the distances we're talking about it would still be a huge spot size.

Re:DNA Over Signal

Lasers aren't actually parallel. They are diffraction limited.

Correct! I also want to point that even though "absorption" may sound like nothing (especially in space), it is actually an exponential process.

For big distances, the exp(-x) process will dominate the 1/(r^2) process, i.e. absorption will dominate beam widening.

You have a rather clear view in space, though.

Re:DNA Over Signal

Yes, but where to point it? Lasers are only good if you know what you're aiming at.

Re:DNA Over Signal

I'll try to explain.

The radiation radiates from a point (more or less). As the radiation travels it forms an expanding sphere. The energy from the initial burst of radiation is spread out over the surface area of this sphere.

As the surface area is proportional to the square of the radius, the energy dissipates at a rate of 1/r^2.

For the energy to dissipate at a rate of 1/r^3 it would need to be spread throughout the sphere, as the volumne is proportional to the cube of the radius.

Re:DNA Over Signal

1/r^2 stands true for all electromagnetic waves. That means the intensity of the signal will decrease by the square of its distance.

This isn't a true statement depending on what exactly you mean...

For one the range of the electromagnetic force is infinite (see this for more information [gsu.edu]).

Second the inverse square law comes from the fact that the area of the shell of radiation coming off of a point source (star for example) increases to the square of the radius from the source (basic geometry). Yet the amount of energy (number of photons in the case of electromagnetic radiation) that is in that shell of radiation is constant so the density of those photons reduces by the inverse of the square of the distance (See this for a graphical explination. [gsu.edu])

So if you look at a given photon traveling through space its "signal" will not weaken with the square of the distance, if it did this universe would be a dark dark place (also it would break the concept of quanta).

Also if you have photons traveling parallel to each other then the inverse square law doesn't apply because you have not radius to begin with.

Now it is hard to get fully parallel photons but you can get close (lasers, maser, etc.) and the closer you get the greater the radius of the theoretical point source for the signal. The greater the radius of the point source the father the signal can propagate before the exponential effects of the inverse square law begins to take hold.

So yes it is likely that the inverse square law applies to signals such as these but the point source radius to use in the calculation can be relatively huge if you take steps to focus the signal (attempt to have the photons travel in a parallel beam).

Re:DNA Over Signal

So if you look at a given photon traveling through space its "signal" will not weaken with the square of the distance

This is probably the key point. Yes, the energy density decreases with square of distance, but that just means you have to stare longer to see the signal. This is how telescopes can measure faint stars. If they look longer, more photons arrive. So if we sent a modulated signal (e.g., amplitude, frequency, phase) it would still reach other planets in a readible form. The modulation would just have to be very slow so they don't integrate the whole modulation over the "staring" period.

Re:DNA Over Signal

The modulation would just have to be very slow so they don't integrate the whole modulation over the "staring" period.

Excellent point, but not necessarily true. Sure, you'd need a long integration time, but that doesn't mean that the code rate would have to be slow. If the signal is periodic (and it'll be hard to be noticed unless it is), you or the aliens can integrate bits from different cycles. That's assuming that the receiver knows the period, but with enough compute power, they can try all possible periods.

The Arecibo bit rate is 10 per second -- much faster than most deep space star exposures, but decipherable with the above method.

Re:DNA Over Signal

Realize the "beam" from your laser pointer is still spreading out. The "dot" gets bigger the further away you go.

Whatever the change in cross sectional area over distance X, there will be 4 times the change in area at distance 2X, 9 times the change at 3X, and so on.
This is what the inverse square relationship means.

Re:DNA Over Signal

Actually the inverse square law holds for any thing with a initial fixed density that propagates from a point source.

So say you throw 100 rocks (each with a placard saying "Eat at Joes") out in an even distribution across the night sky then the density of those rocks in a shell centered on and growing out from the earth will reduce in accordance with the inverse square law. The farther you get from the earth the bigger this shell gets and the farther the distance between the rocks in the shell.

This increase in distance between the rocks means we have to get luckier and luckier that someone will actually see one or more of rocks and the little placard on it.

So your statement is non sensical since the inverse square can affect a bunch of rocks or photons.

Of course if we get lucky and someone happens to be inline with a rock they could get the message much better then a weak electromagnetic signal. Of course for every rock we send out we can send out trillions and trillions of photons in focused beams that can get their attention with enough signal strength to be useful. The beam can cover vastly larger areas then a rock ever could (now a rock with a say radio source could be interesting) and they travel just a wee bit faster ;-) then a rock.

(I can see it now we launch a rock at a considerable fraction of light speed to get it out to a candidate world in a timely fashion only to get lucky and have a direct hit on their world... booom! Yeah they got the message alright.)

Re:DNA Over Signal

Well, the problem with radio signals is that they degrade so fast, and the fact that what we transmit will probably not be intelligible to any foreign species, they may get the drift that we are semi-intelligent, but probably not enough information to decipher where we are from or our purpose. With physical artifacts, as long as the beings can see visible light, there is a good chance that they can get a good jist of what we are trying to convey. We can draw pictures of humans and animals and plants on our planet, and possible draw basic symbols and graphs to make out basic mathematical concepts, and possibly the general location of Earth. While it would be much more difficult to locate a physical object than a radio signal, the short range of a radio way probably makes it impractical for long distance communication in space. Of course, there is the possibility of physical objects degrading with time, but with proper materials this should be pretty limited.

Re:DNA Over Signal

Well... Just based on my personal experience I think it would take some really, really, good porn for me...

Re:DNA Over Signal

Its not a problem of the actual signals degrading.

They get completely overpowered by the huge great big solar radio emitter, so that by the time they reach another starsystem, all thats resolvable is the signal from our sun itself.

This actually turns out not to be the case, for a couple of reasons. First, Earth outshines the sun on several radio bands - the sun's dumping most of its energy as visible light, and while electrical effects in its atmosphere are noisy, they don't cover the entire radio spectrum. Second, we could launch solar-orbit radio telescope arrays _now_ that would have enough angular resolution to pick out individual thunderstorms on the superjovian planets we've detected nearby. Resolving a beacon from a star spatially, for any star system near enough to matter, is do-able (though we aren't going to do it ourselves until we decide a space-based radio telescope array is worth the money).

I also question the parent post's assertations that radio signals are degraded to unintelligability. We can pick up millisecond pulsars just fine, meaning we could at the very least broadcast a beacon with data modulated at kHz rates. My understanding is that there are relatively clean frequency windows in the interstellar medium that would let us transmit intelligeably at far higher bandwidth.

Re:DNA Over Signal

Indeed. There's an outside chance [wikipedia.org] that in 40,000 years Voyager will enter another solar system with its record (the plaque was on the Pioneers). The chances that a civilization exists there, and that they will notice and intercept it are unbelievably small. Why bother?

Re:DNA Over Signal

>Why bother?

Well, it's a feel-good PR thing and it probably cost next-to-nothing relative to the overall project and it maybe it helped get the project through appropriations.

"Look, here's our interplanetary probe, and oh, we've engraved our likeness on a plaque with a greeting in case anyone finds it! *wink*"

"Remarkable! What do you think aliens would do if they found it?"

"Oh, it's likely that an intelligent alien civilization will want to find the makers of this probe and pay us a visit to share their knowledge. Isn't that nice!?"

meanwhile, just outside the orbit of Neptune...

"Hey Glargh, look at this..."

"Oh, how cute -- another one of those 'hey, we are here please come visit' things. What should we do?"

"You know standing order #412,323.443!"

"Oh, right -- let's make it look like an accident. Hey, here's a nice, big asteroid in a goofy orbit between the 4th and 5th planet -- just a little nudge... there. Now, in about 100 orbital rotations or so, they'll get a visit they'll never forget!"

"Glargh, its moments like these when it all seems worthwhile."

Re:DNA Over Signal

How about sending out an object that transmits a signal? You still have a limited range around the object, but at least it will broadcast farther than earth broadcasts. Sending out a signal also increases the chances that an object will be located .. if we were to start picking up some mysterious signal that was nearby, we'd sure try to locate it. It could run on solar power, and only wake up and start broadcasting when it's actually close enough to a sun (in a solar system) that it gets enough power. I'm not sure what it would broadcast - zipping it around our own planet and having SETI alarms going off would probably be a good test.

The other problem with earth-based transmission is that we don't do it anymore [slashdot.org]. We'd need large antennas broadcasting "we're here" signals outwards, and considering SETI already has problems with credibility while looking for signals, I'd imagine getting funding to send out signals would be even harder.

Power supply

I imagine that the opwer requirements for a probe to broadcast anything that could outshine earths would be formidable and probably not feasable. The Voyager(or Pioneer?) probe that recently escaped our solar system (past pluto) after 15-20 years was undetectable.

We'd need something with a renewable energy source, like a bussard ramjet, to be able to broadcast a decent signal strength.

Several billions times the matter of earth

"...better not to send radio transmission, when physical media like DNA on an asteroid can declare a terrestrial presence... ...like the entire information equivalent for our global genome fitting on a 100 pound laptop"

They just forgot one little detail:

If we want to cover as much space as with a radio signal we have to sent several billions times the amount of matter available on earth to multiple directions at the same time. Its similar as with radio signals. The farther you send, bigger is the amount of space to cover and bigger is the number of probes you have to send to cover it.

Just a little detail. :)

Re:SETI finds a signal?

Slashdotted my ass. We were never supposed to know about this. The government cover-up is underway.

Re:and we wonder where DNA technology is going.

The universe is WAY too fricken big for us to be alone.

But it could also be WAY too fricken big for us to be detectable...

(try crunching some numbers WRT the invention of radio transmitters, the speed of light, and the distance to nearby stars)

Re:and we wonder where DNA technology is going.

About the only thing i can say to you is N = R* × fp × ne × fl × fi × fc × L [wikipedia.org]

NeoThermic

Tragic misunderstanding

Voyager scientists attach a plaque on the outbound trip - aliens attach a plague on the return trip.

Every time...

...I hear about something like this, I just have to wonder how we know what we're looking for. I mean, seriously... life outside of our solar system is probably not at all like the life we find here on Earth. At least, I sure hope it's not. In any case, how do we even know what to start looking for?

Re:Every time...

We assume that any sufficiently advanced civilization will attempt to seek other such intelligences, just as we are doing with SETI and other smaller projects. Transmission by electromagnetic means is the most likely means of communication, due to its speed, relative simplicity, etc. We are looking for artificial patterns in received signals to suggest that it was created by intelligence and not by nature, that is, stars, clouds, whatever.

Some things are universal, not cultural

... Therefore they are mathematicians and scientists. They use radio waves and other technologies that we use ...

You do realize that in the SETI context "advanced civilization" means "technologically advanced civilization"? If they are an advanced civilization they will have a basic understanding of science, of how the universe works. Electromagnetism is an elementary part of that understanding. Our methods for establishing communication do not have a western or human bias. Counting off prime numbers is pretty neutral, an advanced civilization should recognize that this would be a quite improbable natural phenomena. Similarly the frequencies we would use for such signals would be pretty neutral, a multiple of a universal constant, another improbable natural phenomena. Some things are universal, not products of human or western culture.

Re:Every time...

how do we even know what to start looking for?

It is a common misunderstanding that the SETI project is decoding radio signals and trying to listen to some sort of alien language. What SETI is actually doing is looking for radio signals that are not from Earth. They are rather easy to find because as the Earth spins, it will create a very predictable increase and decrease in the frequency of radio waves that are not from Earth (simple doppler effect). Waves produced from the Earth have a near constant frequency because both the sender and receiver and spinning around the Earth at the same time.

An interesting signal is one that is from off-planet. It gets more interesting if the direction of origin is some other galaxy. It gets even more interesting if there is no scientific reason for any object in that galaxy to produce the signal. Finally, with all that checked, someone might try to see if the radio waves are transmitting an actual message - or we can beam our favorite Simpsons episodes right back to source to prove our own intelligence.

Re:Every time...

The first assumption I make is that it has to be water-based organic life. It has to be water...

Not necessarily. On a somewhat cooler world than ours with 4-5% flourine in the atmosphere, water would be immediately broken down into oxygen and hydroflouric acid, which is liquid in the -83 to 19.4 C range.

This works because "plants" could function by photosynthesis with HF in place of water and carbon tetraflouride in place of carbon dioxide to produce H-C-F chain compounds and liberate free flourine, with nickel as the catalyst in place of the magnesium in chlorophyll. We'd have to postulate higher UV energy levels as well to provide enough decomposition energy, but that goes along with a thinner atmosphere and lower temperatures without much of a stretch.

"Animal" soft tissues in this scenario would be about the same as the plants, but hard tissues would be produced by the reaction

{ H-C-F } + F2 -> { F-C-F } + HF

resulting in a teflon boned and shelled organism, probably one muther-tough sonofabitch. His main energy reaction would be

{ H-C-F } + F2 -> CF4 + HF

with a blood catalyst metal of titanium, which would result in colorless arterial blood and violet veinous, as the titanium flips back and forth between tri- and tetra-valent states. So he'd probably be a good deal more energetic than us 02-running organisms as well.

Given what we know about vulcanism on the outer moons and so forth, I wouldn't be surprised to find that a scenario along these lines is rather more probable around the universe than the local one we're familiar with.

Their technology would be rather different than ours too, since no terrestial style organic matter is possible, and there wouldn't be much around except flourides; no oxides, sulfides, silicates, or chlorides. All metallurgy would have to be electrical. Oh, and they probably wouldn't be good mountain climbers either, since flourides are structurally weak; nothing tough like granite to make mountains out of. So technological progress seems a trifle unlikely. But *shrug* they'd probably think that about Earth, too...

Re:Every time...

That is a cool scenario. In our solar system, there is much extraterrestrial oxygen in the form of oxides, and relatively little in the way of flourides. Does that hold elsewhere? Who knows?

It turns out that oxygen is produced in great quantity both due to the CNO fusion cycle in massive stars, and nucleosynthesis during supernova explosions. So, I'd expect oxygen-dominated chemistry in most star systems.

Silicon is also a favoured nucleosynthesis product, which is why silicate rocks are so common.

Re:Every time...

I'm afraid can't see how this would work. In an atmosphere of HF and F2 how could reaction catalyzing complex molecules ever exist for more than a few seconds, they would be broken down and oxidized very quickly, rendering them useless. Fluorine is just too hungry for electrons! :) Also the HF would quickly dissolve various minerals etc. and form insoluble salts thereby sequestering all the F out of the atmosphere and into the lithosphere in solid bonded form in a short (geological) time period.

I see you've read

Uller Uprising by H Beam Piper.

Re:we are looking for math.

Well, I would say that to produce a transmitter powerful enough to reach other star systems (and hence be of immediate interest to us) the civilization would have to understand at least the basic math of constructing that antenna. Of course you could say that an organic tech could evolve that, but in all honesty a civ advanced enough to genetically alter it's planet-mates to make transmitters would almost certainly have to understand the basic math THAT entailed.

Color is an arbitrary thing, integer math is not arbitrary nor perceptual. Name me a method of perception that would change the number of continents on Earth or planets in our solar system. Even if they used reflected gamma radiation as a primary sense, there would still be the same number of rocks...

A higher culture will understand math, maybe not the same formulas we do etc, but to say they don't have math is like saying they don't have chemistry. They may not have discovered it, but it still works there. As far as that is concerned, if they don't understand fundamental mathematical concepts, they aren't intelligent on a galactic scale and we will never find them anyway. Cuttlefish may generate EM, but they don't on a galactic scale. There is no immediate evolutionary advantage of being able to do that...

Re:send engineered DNA

Oh what are you thinking?!

Everybody knows that if you send some genetically engineered organism into the vastness of space, it will only return far more advanced - and destroy us for sending it's ancestors to a dark and empty prison.

Duh.

Re:send engineered DNA

What if we deliver this encoded DNA to a species that uses, say, a silicon matrix encoding their genetics?

Why would they even look at DNA, if they didn't realize it was a way to encode info as well as the foundation of life for us?

Hmm

If this turns out to be an MP3, it looks like someone is gonna get sued (it would be filed as RIAA v. Zorack Doe)

Time to go find the dog

While I originally applauded SETI's efforts, I'm beginning to find this a bit ridiculous. When you lose your dog, you don't normally wait for it to find you: you look for it. We're basically sitting here waiting for a message, when we should be physically searching. Chances are any life worth finding in our neck of the universe won't be communicating via radio signals anyway.

I think the latest Mars expedition was a good step: look for livable areas, later look for life. Don't sit around waiting for it to come to you.

Re:Time to go find the dog

SETI isn't looking for messages people are sending us, it's looking for evidence that somebody out there is communicating by radio. As an example, other civilizations within about fifty light-years or so would be able to pick up TV signals from us, and radio could be detected for almost twice the distance. None of these are intended as extra-terrestrial communications, but they'd be evidence that we're here.

A minor issue is that

Physical objects are a tad harder to find. We would be happy to find a civilization like our own... however, we didn't notice a rather large until three days after it had almost hit our planet. The other real snag happens to be major as well - it doesn't travel at the speed of light. Puts things on a slightly larger timescale, doesn't it?

rocks with our DNA??

I would think that the chances of an alien race discovering an asteroid with our DNA on it would be infinitely less than them seeing our radiation signals.

Not to mention the time involved for those rocks to travel interstellar distances. The radio signals will get there at the speed of light. Assuming the rocks don't vaporize along the way, by the time they arrive anywhere, we're talking millions->billions of years later... by which time if we haven't gone extinct, surely we will have already acheived interstellar travel.

Finally!

Pardon me while I step out to light up my giant "WELCOME TO EARTH" sign.

Is it just me...

...or does hurling an asteroid at a distant planet sound like a good way to piss ETs off? On a more practical note, it also sounds like a good way to infect a planet with some such bug. And if they weren't talking about targeting a planet with that "communication medium", then it seems really absurd that that could be a better way to communicate than radiating. Radiating allows you, with relatively little energy expenditure, to send your message out in many different directions hoping someone gets it. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

I didn't read any of the articles yet because they all appear to be slashdotted. Nice going everyone.

Hopefully...

it is "something"!!

Maybe not aliens (I'm sometimes to sceptical to get excited, although I'd like to be :) but new astrophysical phenomena.
AFAIK, pulsars (these fast spinning dead stars with rotational periods in the msec-sec range) were discovered as someone looked at the data and though "wow, aliens, this periodic signal".

DAMNIT!

We get an interesting signal and then you asshats go and /. it!

Oh well, it's probably aliens requesting to be removed from our spam email list.

Re:Sending DNA doesn't seem like a good idea...

Sorry to reply to myself, but I forgot to make a key point; Why do we want to be discovered?

I mean, it would be cool to discover intelligent aliens and all, but why have them discover us?

I like to surf the internet, but for crying out loud, I have a firewall. I see the Internet, the Internet doesn't see me.

I'd say just be cosmic lurkers until we are damn sure it is safe to be sticking our nose into things.

Of course the odds of anything on this topic happening (good or bad) are so poor that I don't think anyone has to worry.

Re:One question

Actually, the other problem (probably bigger, even) is that more and more of our communication has gone wireline or low-power line of sight. We're no longer radiating quite as much easily detectable RF, and the SETI guys assume that there's only a finite amount of time where a civilization would unintentionally radiate.

Basically, I've heard it called the window and door problem - we have a window of 50-100 years (I forget whose estimate) when a civilization is accidentally radiating to find them, and then we have to wait for them to open the door by transmitting intentional beacons.

Re:face it

How true. Consider that the male image on Voyager had a teeny tiny penis, and it all starts to make sense.

The other option is a return message on a plaque, depicting a male alien with really large reproductive organs. That'll tell us, more than almost anything else, what sort of mentality we're dealing with.

Umm...

...the entire informational equivalent for our global genome?

I think I might rather hang onto this information until we're sure our new-found neighbors are friendly.

Would we know a signal if we found it?

Any civilization using radio may be using a lot of encrypted digital signals to communicate among themselves. Wouldn't a sufficiently advanced spread spectrum scheme seem like noise?

Perhaps I am naive, but I think about the things human beings could always see, but couldn't understand until their knowledge progressed past a certain point.

Another article...

is here on
Scotsman.com [scotsman.com].

Anyone got a torrent?

Where's the data? I want to see the signal data. I'm sure it would be confusing to see without the proper perspective and backgrounds into the physics behind their radio telescope and ambient radio noise and whatnot, but I want to look at it anyway.

Re:Anyone got a torrent?

Someone else posted this: Signal Candidate SHGb02+14a [berkeley.edu]

When the signal was finally translated...

...it read "PH1RST P0ST!!!"

Don't worry, NASA scientists have already modded them down.

Mysterious signals from 1000 light years away

I sent in this article - very cool read and makes me wish for FTL travel!

New Scientist [newscientist.com] is reporting that the signal "also happens to be the best candidate yet for a contact by intelligent aliens in the nearly six-year history of the SETI@home project, which uses programs running as screensavers on millions of personal computers worldwide to sift through signals picked up by the Arecibo telescope...*snip*

...There are other oddities. For instance, the signal's frequency is drifting by between eight to 37 hertz per second. "The signal is moving rapidly in frequency and you would expect that to happen if you are looking at a transmitter on a planet that's rotating very rapidly and where the civilisation is not correcting the transmission for the motion of the planet," Korpela says.

They should made the data available

Ok, now if they can't decipher or get anything out of that signal I think they should made available a file with the data to anyone who want to try to poke and study the thing. They found it with the help of the collectivity so they should give to the collectivity the option of working on it. They should also give the exact coordinates of the signal.

The canonical announcement is...

The canonical announcement for this kind of event is "Wow!" [bigear.org].

I call alien deception...

Alien_mastermind "You see, it's actually quite simple. We make a signal appear at an 'empty' point in space and they'll just eat it up. They'll spend so much time theorizing and conjecturing that they'll miss our decceleration from hyperspace."

Alien_sidekick"Hey boss, how we gonna do that without the latest hyperspace frequency propagator? All we have is the older Rev A."

Alien_mastermind"Don't worry about a thing! They'll never pick up on that. It only drifts about 32 Hz--good enough for government work!"

Alternate Stories

http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=1028302004 [scotsman.com]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2004/09/02/walien02.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/09/02 /ixworld.html [telegraph.co.uk]

Re:Quantum entanglement

I'll reply to this even though the other two posts are accurate, because I don't think they're clear :)

Quantum cryptography lets you recognize when you have the same bit (sent via the phase of an entangled photon) that the sender has. You don't get to pick what the bit is; you can just tell when it's the same. So it lets you have a one time pad that you didn't have to establish ahead of time. The pad is the bits sent via the photons. Then the sender sends his message XORed with the one time pad (turning it into random noise for anyone who doesn't have the pad), and the receiver XORs the message with the one time pad to get the original message.

The reason this is so secure is firstly that the message is indistinguishable from noise if you don't have the pad and secondly that it's not physically possible to intercept the pad without letting the real message recipient know. This second part is because detecting the phase of the photon eliminates the wave nature of the photon.

Send them a free iPod with data on it

There seem to be so many being given away anyhow..

Ooh! And some Viagra. That should show how far our race has advanced.

AIEEEE! DON'T TELL THEM WHERE WE ARE!

Hasn't anyone at SETI read The Forge of God [sfreviews.net]? We need to just STFU and listen, not broadcast where we are so the Destroyers can find us! (In a nutshell: a highly paranoid alien race listens for broadcasts from nascent technological civilizations and eradicates them before they can become a threat.)

Seriously, we have no idea of the mindset and capabilities of alien civilizations. The novel's viewpoint is arguable, but caution dictates that we determine the intentions of outsiders before we announce our presence (cf. American Indians vs. Europeans).

good idea why??

lets talk about israel and palistine..or at least remind people of it. Two groups wanting something the other has...land...these groups are of the same species from the same planet and yet they fight and kill. Who are the fucking idiots who come to the conclution that any "advanced" civilization will automaticaly be peaceful and nice and like us just the way we are. This is obsured. There is no correlation between aliens being avanced = nice and fuzzy. We should not be sending signals in any form telling the universe who we are and where we live....listening might be a good idea. Hell that might be the reason we havn't found anything yet....the aliens don't want to advertise their presence becouse what might find them might not be so nice.

If any "advanced" alien culture finds us I for one am hoping that we have nothing they want.

[e-mail]

Food and Fuel Next Exit

At least that's how I read this plaque [google.com] that was bolted on Pioneer 10.

Interesting, But Probably Not ET

Disclaimer: I am not a SETI scientist, but I play one on my home computer [berkeley.edu].

Named SHGb02+14a, the possible alien communication has a frequency of about 1420 megahertz - one of the main frequencies at which hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, readily absorbs and emits energy.

If the signal was some multiple of a prominent hydrogen line, I'd be more inclined to think it's ET. The hydrogen line would be a universally understood reference frequency, and a frequency that is a multiple of that frequency by a factor of 2, 3 or pi would be a frequency that wouldn't have a lot of naturally occurring interference. When the signal is the prominent hydrogen emission line, it seems a lot more likely that this is a previously unknown natural phenomenon. Some hydrogen out there is being excited by some form of naturally occurring energy. That's still not a bad discovery, and is a good example of the surrendipity that's always been at work in science, and it shows that SETI is doing *real* science, despite what SETI's detractors might argue.

The unexplained signal appears to be emanating from a point between the constellations of Pisces and Aries, where there is no obvious star or planetary system within 1,000 light years, and the transmission is also very faint.

That seems a bit suspicious too. It would require an enormous amount of power to broadcast a signal we could detect over that large distance. Wishing doesn't make these things true, but I'd certainly prefer a signal from a closer neighbor, so we could have a meaningful conversation.

So far, the telescope has managed to pick up the signal for only about a minute in total, which is not sufficient for astronomers to analyse it fully.

That's the problem with a fixed dish. It points where it points, and it moves as the Earth rotates. SETI gets "leftover" time on Arecibo, making it difficult to do the research they'd like to do. That should change soon when SETI has access to their new large array of dishes forming an interferometer that they can point where they want, and dwell on an area for a much longer period of time. Paul Allen may have been instrumental in creating the evil Microsoft empire (see how I worked in the mandatory /. anti-MS bias?), but he's provided adequate contrition for that sin by funding Scaled Composite's X-Prize hardware and the SETI interferometer. What a dude.

Other questions arise over the signal's frequency, which oscillates by between eight and 37 hertz a second. Paul Horowitz, a Harvard University astronomer who looks for alien signals using optical telescopes, believes that the drift in the signal makes it "fishy".

OK. He's an optical guy. But he's never heard of Frequency Modulation (FM radio)?

Assuming it's a natural phenomenon, this might be Doppler shift? I don't know how quickly the frequency drifts, but large planets have been observed close to stars with orbital periods of a couple of days. With weird objects like black holes and neutron stars, which definitely have the power to produce signals we could detect from that far away, who knows what type of weird celestial mechanics might be involved?

This unexplained phenomenon has now attracted the attention of radio astronomers. It'll get the instrument time required to collect a lot more data, and we'll probably learn what's causing this signal fairly soon. Man, ya' gotta' love science.

Re:My God, it's full of primes! Seriously!

new scientist is down.
can you post that text file?

Re:My God, it's full of primes! Seriously!

ncevysbby is aprilfool rot13'ed

Mod parent down.

He's pulling your legs. ncevysbby is aprilfool rot13'd.

The public lynching will be held at 12 noon tomorrow. Or something.

Alien Message... DECODED!

Dear Sir/Madam,

Let me start by introducing myself. I am Sub-Commander Qulon Zarg, credit officer of the Trans Galactic Bank Ltd. I have a concealed business suggestion for you. Before the Pulson/Darius war our client Overlord Argus Vader who was with the Gandor Star Force and also business man made a numbered fixed deposit for 18 calendar months, with a value of Twenty millions Five Hundred Thousand Zerglian Dollars only in my branch. Upon maturity several notice was sent to him, even during the war early this year. Again after the war another notification was sent and still no response came from him. We later find out that the General and his family had been killed during the war in bomb blast that destroyed their entire planet. After further investigation it was also discovered that Overlord Argus Vader did not declare any next of kin in his official papers including the paper work of his bank deposit. And he also confided in me the last time he was at my office that no one except me knew of his deposit in my bank.

So, Twenty millions Five Hundred Thousand Zerglian Dollars is still lying in my bank and no one will ever come forward to claim it. What bothers me most is that according to the to the laws of my country at the expiration 3 years the funds will revert to the ownership of the Episilon Prime Government if nobody applies to claim the funds. Against this backdrop, my suggestion to you is that I will like you as a foreigner to stand as the next of kin to Overlord Argus Vader so that you will be able to receive his funds.

WHAT IS TO BE DONE:
I want you to know that I have had everything planned out so that we shall come out successful. I have contacted an attorney that will prepare the necessary document that will back you up as the next of kin to Overlord Argus Vader, all that is required from you att his stage is for you to provide me with your Full Names and Address so that the attorney can commence his job. After you have been made the next of kin, the attorney will also fill in for claims on your behalf and secure the necessary approval and letter of probate in your favor for the move of the funds to an account that will be provided by you.There is no risk involved at all in the matter as weare going adopt a legalized method and the attorney will prepare all the necessary documents. Please endeavor to observe utmost discretion in all matters concerning this issue. Once the funds
have been transferred to your nominated bank account we shall share in the ratio of 70% for me, 25% for you and 5% for any expenses incurred during the course of this operation. Should you be interested please send me your private phone and fax numbers for easy communication and I will provide you with more details of this operation. Your earliest response to this letter will be appreciated.

Kind Regards,
Sub-Commander Qulon Zarg

Thanks guys....

So here I am sitting around wondering when this will hit Slashdot, so I send the link to my buddies and stuff and go "damn, site's offline" and curse the script kiddies and go on with my day.

But it was you guys all along! [StrongBad tear]

Seriously. To your credit, I first found out about SETI@Home on Slashdot and ran it for years on spare computers.

Now I have made SHGb02+14a my beeyotch.

Then you guys Slashdotted the article before my mom could see it. :)

Re:Thanks guys....

Ok. So I am excited and forgot to say it clearly enough.

One of my computers found that signal. (magenbrot did too, but I dont know if he/she is aware of it yet)

I have the feeling it was my wife's computer, as it was doing the most crunching at the time of the original hit. (She uses it, I built it.)

It doesn't matter.

As Carl Sagan's pointed out in is book, Contact, no matter how complex or compelling the message from beyond, there will be people who will think it's a hoax.

Or to put it another way, even if God himself this very day with his own hand placed a crucifix in orbit around the earth replacing the moon, science would explain it.

I Know This About Intelligent Life in the Universe

It would be a good idea.

100 pound laptop?

(like the entire information equivalent for our global genome fitting on a 100 pound laptop!)

You want me to send them my old TRS-80 Model 4P [digibarn.com]?

MSNBC's take

Alan Boyle of MSNBC [msn.com] has this take:

"We found that the scores of almost everything went down, and the score of one of the signals went up," Anderson said. That signal was SHGb02+14a.

"But that doesn't actually mean that that's an E.T. signal," Anderson added. "First of all, statistically, from the assumption that we're looking at white noise, you'd expect one of the scores to go up. Secondly, the parameters of that signal that did go up pretty much rule out the possibility of it being an E.T. signal."

The signal exhibited a rapid shift in frequency -- behavior that is indeed a mystery. But the shifting signal is more likely explainable as a ground-based glitch, an anomalous satellite transmission or a natural space phenomenon. There's a "very low probability" that the signal would fit the profile for an intentional transmission from E.T., Anderson said.

Anderson said he downplayed the signal in his interview with the New Scientist's reporter earlier this week. "If she got the idea that that was a promising signal, she got the wrong impression," he said.

It definitely comes from earth

And, most probably, ist is nothing more than an artifact from the telescope.
Nobody seems to have noticed this paragraph of the Article:

What is more, if telescopes are observing a signal that is drifting in frequency, then each time they look for it they should most likely encounter it at a slightly different frequency. But in the case of SHGb02+14a, every observation has first been made at 1420 megahertz, before it starts drifting. "It just boggles my mind," Korpela says

So, everytime they detected it it started at 1420 MHz and then started shifting? How could asignal from 1000 Lightyears away react in such a way? Do you think the aliens restart the signal every time we are looking?

No, sorry, everyone. This looks pretty much. like a malfunction of the telescope in Arecibo.

Hz =

A planet would have to be rotating nearly 40 times faster than Earth to have produced the observed drift; a transmitter on Earth would produce a signal with a drift of about 1.5 hertz per second.

Doesn't Hz stand for frequency, 1 per second? How can this be 1.5 'events' per second per second?

Re:Hz =

a drift of about 1.5 hertz per second.

Doesn't Hz stand for frequency, 1 per second? How can this be 1.5 'events' per second per second?

This means a change in frequency. Say, the frequency starts at 100 Hz, and after 10 seconds it's 115 Hz. It's changed by 1.5 Hz per second.

Same with acceleration, it's a change in velocity so it's measured in meters per second per second.

Thats not the Voyager plaque..

Similar to what motivated Voyager scientists to attach a plaque for the outbound trip.

That link in the header is for the Pioneer plaque, not the Voyager golden record..

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec.h tml [nasa.gov]

Figures

I just dropped SETI about a month ago after 2k workunits and one candidate.

I got tired of the information void that they were presenting on server/app status when rolling out BOINC. They got numerous offers from a range of supportive folks from students to users to faculty at OTHER colleges to keep the web page up to date and ignored them.

The newsgroups that allegedly supported the project looked like text book examples of bad usenet w/the flaming and "screw you, you're a volunteer" msgs. The user/support forums on the website were seemingly user run w/little input from the project as well.

After losing my old my-deja email and credit for those units and all this warm fuzzy support, I decided to take my CPU cycles elsewhere.

(and bask in the glory of being ignored there too no doubt)

Re:And here comes another signal...

slashdotted - try this http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=1028302004 / [scotsman.com]