SETI Researcher Quashes Signal Rumors

brainstyle writes "According to Dan Wertheimer of SETI the whole ET signal excitement is more hype than science. I told myself it was in all likelihood nothing special, but I'm still disappointed. Darn."

This is not a cover-up. I repeat – This is no

[SeanTobin]

Wow... check out these segments from the article:

Astronomers deny ET signal report

Astronomers have moved swiftly to quell speculation they may have received a deep-space radio signal

It's all hype and noise

We have nothing that is unusual. It's all out of proportion.

It's not much of anything at all. We're not investigating it further.

At the moment, we have no candidates that we are particularly excited about

It's all hype. We don't have anything we are excited about.

we have no candidates that we are particularly excited about and the new 'signal' is not a priority.

it is not surprising that a signal like this occurs purely due to chance.

not new and definitely not a signal

With that much denial in one news report, you know it has to be a cover-up :).

Re:This is not a cover-up. I repeat – This is

[Eloquence]

The BBC article is certainly high on denial and short on substance. I particularly dislike the intro: " It was reported on the internet that the signal had been found .." - Oh, these wacky Internet people are at it again. The New Scientist is also a print publication, and it did not report that a signal had been found, it reported that there was a particularly strong candidate signal, which showed certain interesting oddities which may very well rule it out from being artificial:

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.

This does not, however, convince Paul Horowitz, a Harvard University astronomer who looks for alien signals using optical telescopes. He points out that the SETI@home software corrects for any drift in frequency.

Fishy and puzzling

The fact that the signal continues to drift after this correction is "fishy", he says. "If [the aliens] are so smart, they'll adjust their signal for their planet's motion."

The relatively rapid drift of the signal is also puzzling for other reasons. 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.

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.

Now, in light of these facts, which are not denied in the BBC article, the "We're not investigating it further" type responses certainly sound like an attempt to prevent the media from getting their panties in a twist. "Actually it was a reflection from a weather balloon..."

I hope SETI does investigate. That's the whole point of the project, isn't it?

Re:This is not a cover-up. I repeat – This is

[the_Bionic_lemming]

"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.

The bionic Lemming says :

A navigational Beacon? Rotating on a repair facility? Made to cover as much of an area as possible in times of distress?

Or do the aliens have Software written by their version of Microsoft - and they accidentally have a

Re:This is not a cover-up. I repeat – This is

[molo]

A navigational Beacon? Rotating on a repair facility? Made to cover as much of an area as possible in times of distress?

Maybe a hollow sphere or ring rotating for artifical gravity? ie. DEATH STAR. /me runs

-molo

Re:This is not a cover-up. I repeat – This is

[MadCow42]

>> The signal is moving rapidly in frequency

Isn't that the whole point of FM? (i.e. frequency modulation... varying the frequency to encode data?)

Couldn't it be a signal from a stationary source that's being modulated as a carrier wave? Think outside your tiny box once in a while... :)

Re:This is not a cover-up. I repeat – This is

[Ayaress]

"If [the aliens] are so smart, they'll adjust their signal for their planet's motion."

Only one thing I always say about this: It's a very naive to assume aliens are smart. We're not all that bright by the standards we seem to expect of aliens, and we used to be a lot dumber. We're just as likely to detect an early industrial civlization by their sitcom broadcasts as we are to detect some hyperadvanced godlike race beaming lasers at us accross the galaxy.

Re:This is not a cover-up. I repeat – This is

[gad_zuki!]

I dont believe any project has the equipment to detect a typical TV broadcast off-planet. SETI is banking on another SETI-like program on an alien world which sends radio waves out seeking seekers, as they are not (to my knowledge) capable of detecting the kind of thing you're suggesting. Which makes it even more of a gamble and means no one is going to find anything through "stupidity."

Also, considering the "WOW" signal from a few decades ago it seems that perhaps the odds are against us. Maybe there was

NEW COMMENT FROM SETI.ORG

[Juiblex]

A recent (September 1) article in New Scientist magazine, entitled " Mysterious signals from 1000 light years away," implies that the Berkeley SETI@home project has uncovered a very convincing candidate signal that might be the first strong evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Alas, this story is misleading. According to Dan Werthimer, who heads up the Berkeley SERENDIP SETI project, this is a case of a reporter failing to understand the workings of their search. He says that misquotes and statements

Re:This is not a cover-up. I repeat – This is

[commodoresloat]

hyperadvanced godlike race beaming lasers at us accross the galaxy.

You mean....

Aliens with frickin' lasers on top of their heads?

Re:This is not a cover-up. I repeat – This is

[Qzukk]

Can someone explain to me why the shift in frequency is not being considered as the signal itself? It doesn't take rocket science to create and broadcast an FM signal, and we've even learned how to cope with the doppler effect as we drive along listening to the radio in our cars.

Perhaps 1420 is the start-of-message signal?

Realistically speaking, if I took a reading of a signal that always started the same way and behaved the same way no matter when I started, I would suspect an artifact of the equipment or software.

Re:This is not a cover-up. I repeat – This is

[Rich0]

Well, I'd be the last person to expect aliens to come calling from space, but I'm not against investigation. If you have several interesting signals from the same area of the sky, then it only makes sense to point a radio telescope at it for at least a few days and both monitor the hydrogen emmission continuously for a while, and also check the rest of the spectrum.

I wouldn't be surprised if the signal only showed up periodially if it were artificial. After all, they would probably be scanning the sky with a high-gain antenna. They'd expect a recipient to figure out the period and then be ready to capture whatever higher-speed data is being sent on some other frequency, or something like that.

Most likely this is just a natural phenomena. However, that makes it just as useful to study - it means we can learn something just the same...

From the horse's

[SETIGuy]

Unfortunately, reporters, editors and scientists often work at cross purposes. Reporters want to sell stories, editors want to sell magazines, and scientists want the public to hear about their research. When the science won't sell the story, there is often some creative writing that goes on.

That said, I was both misquoted and quoted out of context in the New Scientist article. The crux of the issue is that there really isn't much chance that the "signal" is actually extraterrestrial or even real. The point I was trying to make to the "New Scientist" reporter was that the combination of a stable frequency between observation and the rapidly changing frequency during an observation meant that it was unlikely that it was real, and that it was likely to be a spurious signal due to noise or interference. I reiterated that several times.

I don't know how that got misinterpreted to the point where the article claims I said the signal was unlikely to be interference or noise.

We don't have any plans for reobservation or monitoring, and I'd give 1000:1 odds that there's nothing there.

Re:From the horse's

[SETIGuy]

Actually 1000:1 is a bit on the optomistic side.

This candidate is still the best scoring candidate that we have. That doesn't make it likely that it is ET. If you find a penny, the likelyhood that it will turn into a hundred dollar bill is small.

At some point the telescope will swing past this point again. If we don't see anything at that point, this whole discussion will go away. If we get the chance, (right now we don't have any allocated telescope time and we don't know when we will get any), we might swing the telescope that way just to lay this to rest.

Re:From the horse's

[Performer Guy]

No offense dude but your average layman would consider another swing by your most promising signal to date after a lengthy and extensive search would be a moderately high priority, even if it is a relatively low probability of success. Jeeze you'd think you understood alien civilizations intimately the way you were talking. The fact is there are so many unknowns here you may not understand the nature of such a signal and based on transient observations may not be able to deduce anything other than you have a candidate and in this case the **ONLY** candidate signal to make it this far. At the very least they may be an interesting astronomical phenomenon there.

Consider for a moment there may be an alien project on that planet, and some guy struggling for budget to keep his signal transmitter running and you don't have all the time in the world, maybe they had an equipment upgrade between your scans, or a change in transmission theories. Maybe the have detected methane and oxygen in our atmosphere after extensive surveys of their sky and are targeting us with a signal.

My point is not that this is likely, but given this is the only signal and we don't know much about most of the factors in Drake's equation and the anthropic principal is at work here thare are many reasons for *showing a little bit of enthusiasm* and checking out this signal one more time, and not taking your sweet time to do it.

Re:From the horse's

[at_18]

You are asking the wrong person. SETI doesn't get to point the Arecibo radio telescope. They piggyback the signal and look at the section of the sky the telescope is looking at (for different researchs), and analyze any signals coming down.

There are about a zillion research projects that compete for a scarce resource, telescope time. Each telescope has a time assignment committee, that will decide who will be able to point the telescope. SETI is the last in the list. So you should send your request to Arec

These are not the droids you are looking for

[goombah99]

They know its not a real signal because it said so.

Re:This is not a cover-up. I repeat – This is

[DHR]

Lots of denial, without any explanations. We want to know why its all hype and noise, why it's not unusual, and why it's not a signal. In short, what did they realize it was?

Re:This is not a cover-up. I repeat - This is no

[fbg111]

I for one welcome our new non-existant alien overlords.

Re:This is not a cover-up. I repeat – This is

[Agent Green]

It was really a couple guys on a polished part of the dish cracking open a Pepsi...

I was all ready

[hax0r_par]

to believe this too. When will the aliens come so that we may bring rise to the war on inter-galactic terrorism?

And how interesting..

[AnswerIs42]

That when I first clicked the "Read More".. I see this:

Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.

Instead of the story..

Re:And how interesting..

[TopShelf]

see... it is a cover-up!!!

Cover Up exposed.

[commodoresloat]

The message has been found and translated. A text of the translation follows.

Hello,
I am Mr Buck Francisco, General Manager(Treasury) of Land
Bank, Helopkino, in the Alpha Centauri System.This is an urgent and
very confidential business proposition.

On earth date June 6, 2000,an alien Oil consultant/contractor with
the Alpha Centauri Institute of Mining and Metallurgy,
Mr. Darth Vader made a numbered time(Fixed) Deposit for
twelve earth months, valued at US$26,500,000.00,
(Twenty-six Million, five hundred thousand of your Earth US Dollars).

Upon maturity,I sent a routine notification to his forwarding
address but got no reply. After a month, we sent a reminder and
finally we discovered from his contract employers, the Centauri
Petroleum Corporation that Mr.Darth Vader died from a spaceship
accident.On further investigation,I found out that
he died without making a WILL,and all attempts to trace his next
of kin was fruitless.

I therefore made further investigation and discovered that
Mr.Darth Vader did not declare any kin or relations in all his
official documents,including his Bank Deposit paperwork in my
Bank. This sum of US$26,500,000.00 has carefully been fixed in my
bank for safekeeping.

No one will ever come forward to claim it.According to Helopkino
Law,at the expiration of 5 (five) earth years, the money will revert to the
ownership of the Government if nobody applies to claim the fund.

Consequently, my proposal is that I will like you as a Alien to
stand in as the owner of the money which was fixed deposited in my
bank. I am writing you because I as a public servant,i cannot operate
an alien account.

I want to present you as the owner of the funds so you can be able to
claim them with the help of my attorney. This is simple.I will like
you to provide immediately your full names and address so that the
Attorney will prepare the necessary documents which will put you in
place as the beneficiary of the funds.

The money will be moved out for us to share in the ratio of 80% for
me and 20% for you. The paperwork for this transaction will be done
by the Attorney.If you are interested, please reply immediately via
my SETI@home address and Upon your response,I shall then provide you
with more details and relevant documents that will help you understand
the transaction.Please observe utmost confidentiality, and be rest
assured that this transaction would be most profitable for both of
us because I shall require your assistance to invest my share in real
estate within your country.

Due to the nature of confidentiality in this Transaction our
communication can only be via SETI.

Awaiting your urgent reply via my email Above.

Thanks and my regards.
BUCK FRANCISCO.

Oversight ala Contact?

[DumbSwede]

Most likely not ET.
But even if it's not, the real question is whether the Government is swooping in to take over management of detecting and decoding of the Signal ala "Contact"

The denials mean little in themselves, but if the next day includes evidence of some Science oversight committee on flight to SETI@Home and various other radio observatories, and if a suspiciously high percentage of radio dishes start pointing in the same direction in the sky - well then interesting days may be ahead.

Don't be too quick to judge!

[Weaselmancer]

Dan, did you try to map the signal to a 3 dimensional shape? A cube maybe??

Re:Don't be too quick to judge!

[kidgenius]

Ah...you too are a firm believe in The Time Cube [timecube.com]. But, if you believed, you should know that you cannot fully understand the Time Cube! :-)

Re:Don't be too quick to judge!

[CXI]

Actually, I thought that author was making a Contact reference..

Re:Don't be too quick to judge!

[entrager]

No discussion of the time cube is complete without bringing up our good buddy Alex Chiu [alexchiu.com].

Re:Don't be too quick to judge!

[The Salamander]

Hey stupid - are you too
dumb to know there are
4 different simultaneous
24 hour days within a
single rotation of Earth?

Re:Don't be too quick to judge!

[kidgenius]

Actually, he seems pretty dead serious. Check out the MIT videos on his site. He participates in a quasi-debate session w/ some professors and students. Pretty interesting, though the guy seems dumber than bricks.

Re:Don't be too quick to judge!

[Cat_Byte]

ROFL! I noticed that too. Even if he was talking about sides it would be 6

Re:Don't be too quick to judge!

[drinkypoo]

Clearly you do not understand TIME CUBE.

Re:Don't be too quick to judge!

[garcia]

They can't get him off the ground into LEO because of the incoming hurricane. Once they can get a shuttle out of the hangar and off the ground he will broadcast his 3D findings from Mir.

Clueless mods at it again.

[garcia]

This isn't offtopic in the least. This is a reference to the movie Contact where a genius solves the coded messages sent by the aliens in 3D. He's located on space station Mir at the time.

God if you're going to moderate someone down at least know what you're doing.

Re:Don't be too quick to judge!

[Bluesman]

Yeah!

And I'll bet if they triangulate the signal they'll find out it's probably coming from pop-star Lance Bass's own personal space station.

That freaky eccentric teen idol is only trying to spur on our scientific endeavors. He's so dreamy.

Re:Don't be too quick to judge!

[LittleGuy]

Dan, did you try to map the signal to a 3 dimensional shape? A cube maybe??

They did, and results were disturbing.

Decoded, the signal resolved into the datastream of a Usenet flamewar decades ago, culminating in the invokation of Godwin's Law.

oh well

[Second_Infinity]

I guess I'll have to take the signs and flares off my roof now. :(

I for one

[jcook793]

I for one say good riddance to our alien radio-emitting overlords.

And the signal says...

[Shadow Wrought]

First Post.

Obviously not intelligent.

Should be safe

[nizo]

We should be fine as long as the signal isn't a countdown.

Re:Should be safe

[cephyn]

Or a cookbook.

Re:Should be safe

[cpeikert]

Not to worry; the cookbook's title is "How to Cook for 40 Humans."

Re:Should be safe

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

It isn't...is it. Somebody get Jeff Goldblum off the set of Rocky meets Jurassic Park...The Final Franchise. We need experience.

Maybe not radio?

[Gentoo Fan]

NPR has a cool piece [npr.org] regarding how radio may not be the best approach to looking for ET life.

Re:Maybe not radio?

[Big_Al_B]

NPR? Well they're probably just saying that because, in their experience, no one is listening. :^)

message was real...

[Anonymous Coward]

It offers a free ipod.

Re:message was real...

[lucabrasi999]

Free gmail accounts.

Re:message was real...

[Shakrai]

Free gmail accounts.

I have five invites. I'll give three of them away to the first three people to respond.

And the cover-up begins.

[DarkHand]

A mention of a possible signal and someone comes out to vehemently deny it? Tinfoil time!

Cover-up conspiracy theories

[GuyMannDude]

Y'know, I get really tired of all this bullshit I hear. It's bad enough to hear this bullshit when I interact with "normal" people -- do we really need this on slashdot as well?

Look everyone, making any sort of contact with an alien civilization would be such an incredible discovery, there's no way the government could ever keep it quiet. Christ, they can't even keep China from obtaining detailed blueprints on every single nuclear weapon in the US arsenal. So how are these nincompoops going to keep a bu

Well

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, retract my welcome of our new alien overlords.

I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories but...

[fzammett]

I try to keep the tinfoil hat in the closet as much as possible, but one can't resist...

Yesterday, we get this quote from Dan Wertheimer:

"It's the most interesting signal from SETI@home. We're not jumping up and down, but we are continuing to observe it."

but today we get:

"It's all hype and noise. We have nothing that is unusual. It's all out of proportion."

and we also get Paul Horowitz:

"It's not much of anything at all. We're not investigating it further."

So yesterday the chief scientist for the project says it's the most interesting signal (which in and of itself just means it was a little different than the rest) and that they will continue to investigate it. But now today it's just a bunch of media hype and they aren't investigating it any further (I'm not sure who Horowitz actually is, but it seems a safe assumption, based on his comment, that he's associated with the project".

Yes, it COULD just be a case of "Oh wow!... Oh no, wait, nothing". Or it could be an outright coverup. I suspect it's something in between, but chains of comments like these really do lead a person down a particular path.

Unlikely ....

[gstoddart]

Yes, it COULD just be a case of "Oh wow!... Oh no, wait, nothing". Or it could be an outright coverup. I suspect it's something in between, but chains of comments like these really do lead a person down a particular path.

I think you would probably find that the people who want to find extraterrestrial life really, guinuinely want to find it. They would neither risk being considered cranks by repeatedly saying "found one -- oops, psyche" nor would they willingly participate in a cover up if they did.

A lot of scientists already think of SETI as being a little flaky. Giving people reason to believe that more would be silly.

[ then again, since I can't prove a negative, I can't completely rule out the assertion either. =]

Re:Unlikely ....

[fzammett]

Just to clarify my comments, I certainly don't think they did this on pupose if it was just a mistake. I think they got excited about something, then a few hours later realized it wasn't nearly as exciting as they thought at first.

If that's the case, I'd really like an expanded explanation. If they figured out it's a telescope malfunction, let us know. If they discovered it corresponds with a Pulsar or something, let us know. If they think someone hacked the software, let us know. They way they left i

Re:I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories but

[wass]

I'm not sure who Horowitz actually is, but it seems a safe assumption, based on his comment, that he's associated with the project

Paul Horowitz is a physicist at Harvard who's primary claim to fame is being one of the co-authors of The Art of Electronics [artofelectronics.com]. The other author being Winfield Hill.

Paul is a damn smart guy, is pretty funny, and has an encyclopedic knowledge of electronics. I took the Physics 123 class with him and Tom Hayes at Harvard about 5 years ago so I have some sense of his intellect.

Correct link

[Anonymous Coward]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/3621608.stm [bbc.co.uk]

see the 2 in the URL ? that denotes US based servers (bbc world edition) if its a 1 its UK servers, great and superquick for the UK but as most of the traffic here is US based its better/quicker to use the designated servers for that area

Wait a minute...

[cephyn]

so if this is really nothing and they at SETI aren't interested, where'd all the damn hype come from in the first place? thats what i dont get....who started it, and what happened to them?

i understand its so very probably not an ET signal...but what if it was?

Re:Wait a minute...

[Ayaress]

It was probably somebody looking at results who overreacted. SETI's site has a list of their "hopefuls" and such, most of which are nothing like this. I suspect somebody looked at the latest batch of data and saw a "hopeful" signal and didn't realize that those aren't that rare and usually pan out to be nothing.

Delay tactic

[SunSaw]

My sources indicate that the message was along the lines of "take me to your leader", but the folks over at the SETI project want to wait until after the US election in November before replying. BTW, here's a sample of the results [berkeley.edu] that users have submitted.

Alone

[HogGeek]

Like most of the geeks on this site, I'm afraid we are really all alone...

Although

[RsG]

It is worth noting that TFA says that the signal in question in in the hydrogen absorbtion band. I remember reading old sci-fi stories that speculated that these frequencies would be a good candidate for interstellar communications, since interstellar hydrogen absorbs EM radiation in this frequency, sweeping it clear of noise. Obviously SETI feels the same way, or else they wouln't consider this signal to be "of interest".

If they have found an interstellar signal in this frequency, and it isn't artificial, will we have to revise our understanding of astrophysics? My understanding is that this can't be regular white noise. Maybe it's from our solar system (a naturally occuring local signal rather than interstellar). Or maybe it's something new.

Re:Although

[Jhan]

...interstellar hydrogen absorbs EM radiation in this frequency, sweeping it clear of noise. Obviously SETI feels the same way, or else they wouln't consider this signal to be "of interest".

Eh? Wouldn't that mean interstellar hydrogen would also absorb the signal? Your link would be useles, unless your signalling power was humongous, in which case... Why worry about noise?

Not quite

[mangu]

interstellar hydrogen absorbs EM radiation in this frequency

No, it's exactly the opposite. There is very low absorption on this frequency, which means the signal will propagate farther than in other frequencies.

will we have to revise our understanding of astrophysics? My understanding is that this can't be regular white noise.

From what I have read, it's a "marginally regular" white noise. That is, it has a shape that's somewhat unusual to find in noise, but not really impossible, just low probability.

Re:Although

[cmpalmer]

Well, you also have to remember that SETI looks hardest at the hydrogen absorbtion band, so the likelihood of finding a false positive in this band is higher because that's where they're looking.

It's most likely the ...

[JediDan]

warning beacon [amazon.com]. I've been wondering when it would drift close enough to be detected.

STAY AWAY! Mostly Harmless (but they're getting worse).

Yeah, redundant, but...

[MyHair]

I, for one, welcome nobody.

1420 MHz

[jmanforever]

I picked up this signal on my modified home satelite dish, and was able to decode the following:

"4ll Ur B4s3 r B3l0ng 2 Us"

Crap!

[UncleBiggims]

The Amazonians are looking for a little interplanetary snu-snu and Dan Wertheimer's been cooped up for so long "analyzing data" that he doesn't recognize the signal.

swamp gas

[minus_273]

He continued: "With Seti@home having analysed some 50 trillion frequency bands, it is not surprising that a signal like this occurs purely due to chance."

it was all swamp gas, move along now, nothing to see here

Conspiracy

[$lingBlade]

The thought of a conspiracy to cover this up is nagging at me. Imagine if we *were* to be contacted by aliens, what do you think the repercussions would be with respect to religion, national security (U.S. as well as others), economics, science, politics, and so on? To veer off a bit to make my point, if we were hit by a very large meteor from outer space, society if it weren't completely wiped out *might* stand a chance at rebuilding.

But if something like extraterrestial contact were to happen to us as

Re:Conspiracy

[TykeClone]

But that was before Star Trek, Star Wars, even space flight. Now more young people believe in the existence of UFOs than think that they'll receive Social Security.

Proving microbes on Mars wouldn't rock the boat much.

Alf landing in Moscow and eating lunch with Putin might be hard for some to take, though.

Re:Conspiracy

[k4_pacific]

Yeah, but Orson Welles told people that New York was being actively invaded. That's not quite the same thing as picking up a distant radio signal.

"five great machines. First one is crossing the river. I can see it from here, wading... wading the Hudson like a man wading through a brook..."

vs.

"Hey, I think I hear something."

Re:Conspiracy

[Creedo]

Wasn't it about 60 + years ago that Orson Wells did his famous War of the Worlds radio broadcast? Weren't there more than a *few* people out there that were running around reporting lights in the sky, running for safety?

Well, in their defence, they thought the aliens were attacking. I don't recall reading about a bunch of people recanting their religious views due to the broadcast. The "invasion" part is what freaked them out. Therefore, I don't think that it is useful to attempt to draw a conclusion a

Re:Conspiracy

[Otter]

Sure -- the obvious way to implement such a conspiracy would be to launch a decades-long program to look for extra-terrestrial signals, recruit however many volunteers to run a distributed client, announce a potential discovery and then suddenly cover the whole thing up!

FYI, incidentally, Kabbalah isn't a book. The Zohar is the main Kabbalist text. (And, as it happens, deals with all sorts of angels, seraphs and other extra-terrestrial creatures.)

which book

[Guano_Jim]

About first contact involved ET's hammering earth into a pulp with millions of relativistic missiles before hunting down the remains of humanity?

Maybe we don't want to find these guys after all.

there is still hope

[WormholeFiend]

for the hardcorest tinfoil hatters among us in the news today, as silent, flying Big Black Triangles [space.com] sightings are on the rise...

Personally, I'm hoping this is some kind of military craft that is going to be unveiled soon, so we can check out whatever cool tech is inside.

Re:there is still hope

[ravenspear]

for the hardcorest tinfoil hatters among us

It's a shame that this whole situation still gets treated like this. A lot of people know and it still continues. All the data is there for anyone that wants to see it. SETI puts the face on it that mainstream scientists are willing to accept.

Damnit Damnit Damnit

[greymond]

I was really hoping that Jody Foster would decrypt the signals and be able to build a giant metal pod that would drop into the water.

Or maybe a giant planet would coem towards us and try to eat all our satelites.

Or maybe parasitic aliens would come use us as hosts and enslave us.

Oh the possibilities that could have been....

What if we get busted for signal theft?

[markana]

Or at the very least told we have to move along and vacate this planet? After all, we're receiving the signal *outside* of their planet...

I'm just waiting for the Galactic police to show up.

Screensavers?

[Lispy]

FTA:"For six years, the Seti@home project has used a downloadable screensaver on millions of computers around the world to sift through data for anything unusual."

I mean, the screensaver might just one day solve one of the biggest questions to mankind. The same perky things that were thought to be obsolete years ago and brought you Hotbar and Gator. This world just keeps amazing me.

how does he explain the drift?

[another misanthrope]

I quoted from this in the last /. topic about this signal - I'd like to hear what he has to say about this article [newscientist.com] from New Scientist which says:

The relatively rapid drift of the signal is also puzzling for other reasons. 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. 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.

I can understand they don't want to say there's aliens YET but come on - something weird is there...

Possible explanation and some questions...

[powerlinekid]

So they've received the same signal 3 times that starts off at 1420 Mhz.

Now if you look on this site [64.233.167.104] the 1400-1700 Mhz range is used by radio astronomy and weather satellites. So with that 3 questions:

• Is it coincidental that that signal is the same frequency as what the device receiving it operates on? Could this be why they think it might be interference from the telescope (along with the fact that the telescope already adjusts for shift and this still shifts)?
• Is it possible Seti has just locked onto an old satellite that happens to be heading in the direction of the area of space between pisces and aries? Like maybe they are receiving a signal from something that some time ago was too far out of range to be picked up?
• I do agree with some other posters that this looks like a hell of a change of direction. They've gone from "this is the most interesting" to this is nothing, a full 180, in a day. Not only that, but they have failed to give a reason for such a drastic shift. Could someone have told them to keep their mouth's shut until they know more about it? Could it be that after the initial excitement, they realized that it really is nothing and are trying to save face? I'd imagine Seti tries to remain very cautious in their dealings with the public if for nothing else that they are afraid of losing funding.
• 
  
  Now I'm probably wrong on all of this. Which is why I love /. since some radio geek can tell me why I'm wrong and I'll learn something.

I remember something similar

[thrill12]

The story on the 'near miss' astroid [slashdot.org] had something along the same line: they shared information so soon, they didn't even knew squat about the information themselves.
In the end it proved to be nothing.
But what if this isn't ?

signal "drifting"

[cr@ckwhore]

Here's just my observation about the whole signal "shifting" problem ...

First of all, it's doppler shift. Amateur radio operators deal with doppler shift in radio signals when operating amateur satellites. Basically, when either a transmitting station or receiving station are in motion, the transmitted signal will appear lower or higher in frequency at the receiving station, depending on whether the stations are moving closer together or further apart.

It was suggested in the article that the cause of the "drifting" would be due to planetary motion ... ie: doppler shift of the frequency. It was also noted by the author that any intelligent life transmitting a beacon signal should be "smart enough" to adjust the frequency to compensate for the shift, and that since the signal doesn't appear to be adjusted for doppler, it can't be an alien signal.

Here's the problem with that assumption: It assumes that the aliens are intending earth as the recipient of the signal.

It's most likely that the subject signal is being pointed somewhere else and intended for someone else... not us.

It's important here to point out that doppler shift will vary between any two points. SO ... a signal pointed toward one recipient and corrected for doppler may indeed be received at another point with increased shift because of doppler plus the correction factor. This would explain the wild swings in frequency shift.

Additionally, going on the theory here that we are not the intended recipients of the signal... and thus perhaps not directly in the path of the strongest part of the signal, also explains why reception was a bit weak here at earth.

Armchair scientists unite!

Ping

[Xybot]

...Your Ping Reply was 1,123,589,647,125,665 Seconds .....DISCONNECTED

c == c

[bandy]

Radio waves and light [also a radio wave] travel at the same speed through space.

Re:c == c

[Ned in California]

Actually this is not quite right. c = c in a vacuum, but the interstellar medium is not a vacuum. The density of electrons makes the ISM a dispersive medium, and velocity of wave propagation is a function of frequency. So, for example, X-ray evidence of a gamma-ray burst arrives before the "afterglow" at radio frequencies. See Kraus, "radio astronomy" chapter 9.

Re:c == c

[Ignorant Aardvark]

Space isn't empty. There is stuff in space. And since wavelengths of light have different reflectance properties, in the long run, some wavelengths will travel faster than other. And no, light is NOT a radio wave.

Re:c == c

[TeknoHog]

Radio waves and light [also a radio wave] travel at the same speed through space.

#include <nitpick.h>

Both light and radio waves are electromagnetic waves. Light is not a radio wave any more than Linux is a Windows.

not just a good idea, it's the law

[kippy]

Wait, lasers are faster then radio waves? The congress just amend some fundamental laws of physics?

Re:lasers

[steelerguy]

Sorry, when I said faster I meant you can transmit data faster. So a given chunk of data would arrive quicker via laser than radio wave.

I think we should start looking for lasers over radio waves simply because you can send more data that way and it is more effcients. Same reason many space agencies are looking to change satellites over to lasers rather than radio then can transmit their data back to Earth much more quickly.

Re:lasers

[anothy]

the problem is that radio is broadcast and lasers are (more or less) point-to-point. if some orbital satellite is shooting data back to its planet, there's no laser shooting off to hit earth. even if, for some reason, an alien society is blasting lasers out into their night sky (or from satellites), the odds of them hitting earth are roughly one in umpy-bazillion. radio, on the other hand, goes out in waves, like ripples.

Re:lasers

[steelerguy]

http://www.space.com/searchforlife/optical_seti_00 0427.html

here is a decent story i found while researching the idea of doing it. looks like it is already a group in seti doing it.

Re:lasers

[Ayaress]

They may get here easier, but there's a catch there: It'd have to be pointed at us. That means one of several things:

1. They know we're here and are making a concerted effort to attempt contact us. This means they can't be more than a few light years away, and have already picked up OUR radio waves, meaning odds are we can hear their radio too.

2. They had to know that there was a habitable world here long enough ago to send a signal here on the random chance that there's somebody here to notice. (i.e. they live far enough away that when they sent the laser message, they couldn't know wether or not anybody was here to pick it up)

3. They missed a reciever and hit us by blind luck.

This would also limit us to detecting civilizations advanced enough to have already detected us, and have lasers with narrow enough beams that it's still coherent and good enough aim to still hit us accross great distances.

Non-coherent broadcasts like radio, on the other hand, travels in all directions, and would be expected to be used by civilizations less advanced than us, so we could detect nearly any industrial or better society (assuming we could resolve the signal and recognize it as a signal). Looking for this, we can detect any civilzation, wether they're looking for us or not.

Lasers are easier to detect if they get to us, but radio is much more likely to get to us.

Have we been so primed by TV and movies to expect fantastical aliens that we don't think that we may end up finding the technological equivalent to ourselves fifty or a hundred years ago?

Re:F^%$# aliens, where are you?

[ePhil_One]

F^%$# aliens, where are you?

In secret underground bases under the Arizona desert, why do you ask?

Re:F^%$# aliens, where are you?

[Wumpus]

No, that would in one o' dose TOP
SECRET LABMO-TORIES de gubbnint keep stashed away underneath Virginia.

Re:F^%$# aliens, where are you?

[LittleGuy]

If they came to Deadwood in 1876, they'd be "Bug-eyed C***s***ers!"

Re:The Source

[Skyshadow]

Seeing as they put the distance at 1000 light-years, that'd be a pretty crappy conversation. Just for perspective, the signal would have left the source 95 years before the knights of the First Crusade took Jerusalem (and killed everybody there).

Re:what are you looking for

[Jhan]

What are you hoping they find?

That's actually a very relevant question which hits many UFO believers right in the scrotum.

In my experience 75% are looking for "Shiny happy aliens holding hands", who will of course descend upon us soon, revealing mystical knowledge that will take us, as a species, to the next level of evolution, relieving the believer from his job at K-Mart.

The other 25% believe in horrible, scary aliens, who will of course descend upon us, wreaking havoc and mayhem and instituting

Re:I decoded the signal

[Lispy]

No, it said:
Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 62.359 years