Scientists Looking for Aliens Investigate Radio Beam 'From Nearby Star' (theguardian.com) 75
Astronomers behind the most extensive search yet for alien life are investigating an intriguing radio wave emission that appears to have come from the direction of Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the sun. From a report: The narrow beam of radio waves was picked up during 30 hours of observations by the Parkes telescope in Australia in April and May last year, the Guardian understands. Analysis of the beam has been under way for some time and scientists have yet to identify a terrestrial culprit such as ground-based equipment or a passing satellite. It is usual for astronomers on the $100m Breakthrough Listen project to spot strange blasts of radio waves with the Parkes telescope or the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, but all so far have been attributed to human-made interference or natural sources. The latest "signal" is likely to have a mundane explanation too, but the direction of the narrow beam, around 980MHz, and an apparent shift in its frequency said to be consistent with the movement of a planet have added to the tantalising nature of the finding. Scientists are now preparing a paper on the beam, named BLC1, for Breakthrough Listen, the project to search for evidence of life in space, the Guardian understands. The beam that appears to have come from the direction of Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf star 4.2 light years from Earth, has not been spotted since the initial observation, according to an individual in the astronomy community who requested anonymity because the work is ongoing. "It is the first serious candidate since the 'Wow! signal'," they said.
OK.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Umm, isn't Parkes Observatory where they got all excited about a periodic signal back in 1998 and then it took them 5 years to figure out that it was some guy microwaving his lunch.
928 MHz is used by old wireless mics .. is interference possible? Given Proxima Centauri is low on the horizon. I would sure assume though that people with PhDs in radio astronomy would rule it out instantly via their filtering algorithms.
https://www.nature.com/news/mi... [nature.com]
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The signal wasn't 928 MHz or anything near it though. I'm sure they know more about EE than you do.
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Wait, so you're saying it's aliens? Hahaha.
Like I said, it took them years to figure out that it was a microwave oven. My point is that if it took them YEARS to figure out something was a microwave oven .. you think they can eliminate esoteric sources in less time?
And in those intervening years they published papers about new phenomena based on assumptions that the fake signal, called "perytons", was real. Example: https://iopscience.iop.org/art... [iop.org]
Re:OK.. (Score:4)
No, he's saying it probably originated in space. You need to go through several more layers of assumptions/inferences to conclude from that must be aliens.
As for the microwave incident at Parkes, they figured out almost immediately the signal's source was terrestrial. Why you think that it should be easy to track down the source of that signal is a mystery to me. They detected the spurious signal with an array of 22 meter wide parabolic antennas. The signal was tiny; hunting it down wasn't like tracking down a pirate radio station. You can't mount an antenna that's over fifty feet across on a van, and even if you could it would only detect the signal when the guy with the microwave opened the door while the klystron was still going.
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"they figured out almost immediately the signal's source was terrestrial"
No. It took them three years to gain some confidence it was terrestrial and then another four years to be certain. Even when Lorimer Bursts were detected it wasn't certain whether it was terrestrial or not .. terrestrial is always a suspicion that has to be ruled out. It took Parkes about seven years to be certain it was terrestrial.
https://www.nature.com/news/mi... [nature.com]
After more than four years of searching, researchers using the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia, have identified the source of some mysterious signals: a microwave oven in the facility’s break room.
The above says four years but it was four years from when they identif
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I've read the same article, but come to a completely different conclusion:
the team knew early on that the perytons had an earthly explanation.
Again, why you think this should have been easy to track down is a mystery... Unless it's Dunning-Kruger.
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"Early on" is not "immediately." How about you read a different article, like one published by Parkes Observatory? Like this one: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/... [harvard.edu]
What does the first line say?
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Why would you *expect* them to know *immediately*? Jumping to conclusions either way is just as unscientific.
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I'm saying it wasn't your microphone. But even I have gear that could make 980MHz signal (and modulate it to boot), if I didn't mind my local FCC boy knocking on my door with grumpy face.
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If true that it did come to that location. I would put forth an idea, that a Star So close to us, may be just reflecting our radio waves back or be a natural occurrence from such a star.
If you think of this way. Our Civilization has only been using radio for less than 150 years ago. Also we see many aspect of our civilization relying more towards electromagnetic or optical cable. It is quite possible that a civilization has grown to a technical state and skipped implementing radio technology. As well t
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There is no way that we could be beaming radio waves out into space and have them reflected back to us after ~4 light years.
We currently measure the distance to the moon by painting it with a laser and timing the round-trip time.
To do this, we get a very powerful laser, with a collimated, coherent beam. We point it at the moon and it hits a block of retro-reflectors placed on the moon specifically for this purpose. The detector in a telescope back on Earth receives just a handful of photons back from each p
Re:OK.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Most advanced Amateur Radio Operators know that the attenuation of the moon when trying to bounce a signal off of it is something like 250db.
For reference: a 1500 watt transmission compared to a 100 watt transmission only achieves a gain of 12db plus antenna gain = effective radiated power. Gains can come from antenna design- those are small. However to overcome the Moon's 250db path loss requires huge focused power. Remember the law of inverse squares here... plus the absorption of the moon.
Against a *planetary* body, even in our solar system (millions of miles), the attenuation would make it impossible to detect any reflection. You are dealing with path loss based on the law of inverse squares- compounded by the absorption factor of the planetary surface. My guess 10s of thousands of db of attenuation just within the solar system.
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Against a *planetary* body, even in our solar system (millions of miles), the attenuation would make it impossible to detect any reflection. You are dealing with path loss based on the law of inverse squares- compounded by the absorption factor of the planetary surface. My guess 10s of thousands of db of attenuation just within the solar system.
Venus was picked up on radar in 1961. Arecibo (sometimes with help) used radar to take images of Mercury with a 1.5 Km resolution, the surface of Venus, Jupiter's moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, Saturn's rings, and also found evidence of hydrocarbon lakes on Saturn's moon Titan.
Take a look at some of the images here: https://www.naic.edu/~pradar/r... [naic.edu]
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The GP probably shouldn't have used the word "impossible" or qualified it bit better to mean that they meant impossible for it to happen with some random signal. Let's just say that it's pretty much inconceivable without a truly massive outgoing pulse.
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I read someplace else that this was actually multiple observations within some period of days, and they control for terrestrial interference by "nodding": pointing the antenna a little bit off, then back to the target. If the signal is an artifact caused by something local at the observatory, it should also show up when the antenna is off-target. In this case that didn't happen, which makes Terrestrial interference less likely to be the cause. But obviously not impossible; all known sources of this kind of
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Flat-earther alert!
No but seriously, folks. That's Northen Hemispherer talk. April-May, at the location of the Parkes telescope, it peaks at 62 degrees above the horizon.
Occamian Razorians (Score:4, Insightful)
Most like it's something mundane, like a kitchen appliance near the antenna that's improperly grounded, an artificial (human) satellite that happened to be in the way, a bug in Excel/MS-Access, etc. But, you never know...
Re:Occamian Razorians (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm not saying it's aliens. But it's aliens.
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I think it was damned tourists.
Since this sector of the galaxy is a nature preserve for primitive uncontacted planets like Earth, there are strict rules mandating total radio silence for safari star cruisers. Some yahoo probably forgot to turn off their electromagnetic navigation beacon when they arrived at the Earth observation base camp at Proxima Centauri. Hopefully they were slapped with a hefty fine.
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An alien vlogger disregarding radio silence. Is he going to get some heat over this!
I'll get excited when... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is Aliens it would be likely PRBS (Score:5, Interesting)
It is Aliens it would be likely be some characteristic sequence that is not likely to come from a natural source or interference - for example a short to moderate length PRBS (Pseudo-Random Binary Sequence) pattern. It would likely be some sort of binary modulation for the sake of simplicity using some sort of orthogonal modulation because they have good ratio of minimum distance to average symbol energy.
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Unlikely. Aliens most likely use a trinary system, not binary. I love the pseudo-intellectual use of "PRBS" though. Nice touch.
Wow. A comment that's both extremely arrogant AND extremely pretentious. Nice touch. /. again)
(P.S. Please never post on
Re:It is Aliens it would be likely PRBS (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would aliens use a trinary system? It makes digital logic harder. We are not using binary logic because it is cool but because of engineering reasons. Aliens have the same periodic table and the same laws of physics.
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I'm just trolling. There are no such thing as aliens.
Not at the moment. But now that the Trump administration is over, they'll be back.
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Only if a space cat dies.
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(A) It's called "ternary". "Trinary" refers to a system of 3 stars.
(B) Why do we use Base-10?
Re: It is Aliens it would be likely PRBS (Score:2)
Yeah, but will they use decimal or Imperial measurement units? According to this series of historical documentaries I've seen, it's likely Imperial, even though their empire fell ages ago.
Next up, and more importantly, will they be using vi or emacs? According to this other documentary, they may well use vi. The documentary dropped the letter i, perhaps to indicate they are more selfless than humans...?
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Re:It is Aliens it would be likely PRBS (Score:4, Interesting)
Not necessarily, an unnaturally powerful source with no modulation could be directed to very close star system only to announce "we're here!"
Don't presume to second guess (hypothetical) aliens. They're aliens.
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Except if you wanted to make it clear that it's a "we're here" signal, you 'd do something to the signal that would preclude a natural source -- sending a sequence of bursts in a pattern for example - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 would do or maybe 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13 would do too.
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Natural source already precluded IF it's from 4 light years distance. Sufficient power, and the very narrow bandwidth already do that. There is no natural means to make such a thing. On the other hand, if it's from Earth or satellites, "never mind."
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Fun to plug in numbers in the Free Space Path Loss calculators online; for our best gear to detect transmission from Arecibo antenna at Alpha Centauri system's 3 stars you'd need to pump in about a megawat. That's more than twice the power Arecibo could put into radio wave, when they used 1 MW of energy 450KW went to radio wave and the rest was waste heat.
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Of course that's assuming it's a message. That's not the only kind of artificial signal you could receive; we could be looking at noise generated by some alien industrial process.
Maybe it's the electromagnetic signature of their FTL drive.
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Morse code: UMQRA
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It may not be possible to tell if the signal was modulated in any way. Just like the "wow signal" data would only have shown modulation in the 0.1Hz range (i.e. useless for transmitting information), the way these observations were recorded will set the limits of what could potentially be seen. Since this was radio astronomy, my assumption is that they recorded the radio spectrum of the star at some intervals, and that interval will determine the upper limit of detectable modulation frequency. Hopefully the
Man (Score:4, Funny)
I hope this radio signal doesn't have commercials. Commercials suck.
Alien ads (Score:2)
"Do your tentacles itch, turn purple, or get tangled up in your genitals? We'll we have the perfect solution!..."
Penn and Teller put it best (Score:4, Insightful)
"Translation: something that I didn't understand just happened and I assume it was a ghost"
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It's a common logical fallacy, especially with conspiracy theorists. "All these things happened that I can't explain, therefore it's a government plot." If you watch those 9/11 conspiracy movies, you'll see a bunch of questions like, "how do you explain X?" and not very much evidence supporting their conclusion.
Re: Penn and Teller put it best (Score:5, Interesting)
He closes the chapter with a probing question: how do you know that your inner monologue isn't doing the same thing: making up bullshit excuses for what you already believe and packaging it into pleasant sounding and even eloquent prose?
It ain't just the conspiracy theorists who are talking nonsense. Everyone has to be on guard for it. Because it's natural. Training one's mind to avoid that trap requires constant concerted effort. No matter what your day job or how fancy your credentials.
Dragons, not aliens. (Score:3)
I sold one of them a high powered radio transmitter a few years ago and I think he finally made it the edge of the Outer Celestial Realm of The Great Sphere.
Any of the above being true is more likely than that radio broadcast is "Aliens".
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I sold one of them a high powered radio transmitter a few years ago and I think he finally made it the edge of the Outer Celestial Realm of The Great Sphere.
Any of the above being true is more likely than that radio broadcast is "Aliens".
Oh! I disagree! :-)
I think both possibilities are equally likely!
It is never... (Score:2)
Proxima Centauri B (Score:5, Informative)
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There is open debate about planets that close to low power red dwarf, some scientists say flares would blast away atmosphere quickly... yet other point out if planet has molten interior magnetic fields might be enough to protect it. Planet would become tidally locked, but that might not be show stopper either.
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A wasteland, sort of like daytime TV?
You're right, no intelligent life.
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It is tidally locked. Half the planet is in constant light while the other is in constant dark. Human life can survive there in subterranean complexes. The fact that the star will last more than a trillion years is another plus.
You are also missing the other fact -- that we are unlikely to reach another habitable planet. Hell this one might even be out of reach of a generational ship. Just the fact that humanity can potentially survive on the closest planet to our solar system is pure luck.
Why look for aliens out there? (Score:1)
An artificial signal might have encoded messages (Score:3)
Certainly they would have recorded the signal to see if there is any kind of modulation or data in the signal? Just a solid continuous signal would seem to have little or no function. An artificial signal is likely to have a function, you really want to take a good look it for any encoding. Why not post the signal data on the internet for other people to look through? An encoded message is a good way to support artificiality
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This signal detection was made by going over data previously gathered for radio astronomy. My assumption is that the observation consists of recording the radio spectrum of the star every so often. So basically this "signal" just shows up as a spike in the spectrum and you likely couldn't detect any modulation unless it was very very slow (you'd see the spike appear and disappear). But we don't know the specifics yet, they're working on the paper... It'll be interesting to find out.
The Sparrow (Score:2)
Except that was Alpha Centauri, and the transmissions were picked up by Arecibo. (Maybe the aliens cut the cables at Arecibo?)
Lem (Score:3)
The Investigators should read Stanislaw Lem's "His Master's Voice". If they then suddenly find themselves out of work, they could try his "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub" to discover their next mission.
The Guardian (Score:1)
fine
980MHz, aliens, intelligence..
all good. But we're safe, coz'
The Guardian Understands
Decoded (Score:1)
The Aliens watched the "Lost" Finale (Score:3)
It just arrived over there a couple of years ago, aliens where stunned and got to their IBS (interstellar bitching network) and got on it.
These messages are the aliens bitching about it.
Stellar Flare being used to sell news stories... (Score:2)
I read this article in "The Guardian" on the day it was published, and did some googling to find this article, indicating the explanation was a solar flare [sci-news.com] So disappointingly gonna put my vacation to Proxima Centauri on hold until the next alien signal.
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that should say stellar flare ;)
IT IS (Score:1)
Proxima Centauri? (Score:2)
From Proxima Centauri? They detected the Fithp executing turnover.