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Space Earth Mars

'Alien' Signal Beamed To Earth From Mars In SETI Test (space.com) 46

Posted by BeauHD from the this-is-just-a-test dept.
A new SETI project has begun, where a coded message was beamed from Europe's Trace Gas Orbiter Mars probe to Earth and received by three radio telescopes, "kicking off a global effort to decipher the cryptic signal," reports Space.com. From the report: That effort is A Sign in Space, a multiweek project led by Daniela de Paulis, the current artist in residence at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California and the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia. "Throughout history, humanity has searched for meaning in powerful and transformative phenomena," de Paulis said in a statement.

"Receiving a message from an extraterrestrial civilization would be a profoundly transformational experience for all humankind," she added. "A Sign in Space offers the unprecedented opportunity to tangibly rehearse and prepare for this scenario through global collaboration, fostering an open-ended search for meaning across all cultures and disciplines."

The Green Bank Observatory is one of the three scopes that listened for the Trace Gas Orbiter's signal today, along with the SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array in northern California and the Medicina Radio Astronomical Station in northern Italy, which is managed by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics. Researchers at each of those facilities will now process the signal and make it available to their colleagues around the world and to the public at large. The project team wants folks from a range of backgrounds to study the signal and try their hand at deciphering it. You can learn more about the project, and submit your own ideas about the message, here. There are also workshops available you can attend that discuss the societal implications of detecting a "technosignature" from advanced alien life, among other topics.
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'Alien' Signal Beamed To Earth From Mars In SETI Test More

'Alien' Signal Beamed To Earth From Mars In SETI Test

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  • You forgot a word....

    • Re:Fake. (Score:4, Informative)

      by ClueHammer ( 6261830 ) on Thursday May 25, 2023 @02:41AM (#63549723)
      That is why its 'Alien' is in quotes.. "Quotation marks around single words can occasionally be used for emphasis, but only when quoting a word or term someone else used. Usually, this implies that the author doesn’t agree with the use of the term" Ie not Alien at all... As far as I can tell the signal was really sent, so its not fake at all.

      • I feel like putting scare quotes on alien would happen anyway. Like, how do they know??

      • "Usually, this implies that the author doesn’t agree with the use of the term" Fine argument, but not the case here. There is no way the authors (space.com) "did not agree" with the term "Alien signal" since it was the "reporters" at space.com themselves that entirely made up that term to clickbait their headline. The original scientists did not use it, they used "simulated first contact" ( https://asignin.space/the-mess... [asignin.space] ) which is technically correct.

        The quotes around "alien" makes it not technica

  • Art used to be where all the coolness happened, and we spotty boys just sat quietly in our basements, getting on with making things that did stuff.

    Then things changed, science and tech became cool, and we nerds now rule the world.

    Can't blame women and these lame artist types for all these pathetic attempts to try to appear hot by trying to associate with us.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Misogenystic, irrelevant blether

  • It would be much better if it would be an unannounced test, that only a select few knew about.

    Would the signal be caught at all?

    Would the public be told that a signal had been received?

    Some how have the signal be a representation of a webpage URL explaining that it all was a test. Or just a rickroll.

    • Re:Would be better if it was unannounced (Score:5, Informative)

      by Depili ( 749436 ) on Thursday May 25, 2023 @03:45AM (#63549787)
      If it were unnannounced it would just be dropped by SETI as obviously human generated one.
      • I doubt that. The last couple of SETI "findings" have been signals of human origin.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          I doubt that. The last couple of SETI "findings" have been signals of human origin.

          The last couple??

          Nearly all seti detections representing billions of signals have been detected, determined to be of human generation, and used to update their filters.
          All of the rest of their detections have been determined to be of natural origin.
          Together that's 100% of their detected signals.

          Seti has never once announced detection of any non-human non-natural signal.
          You seem to be scare quoting the word "findings" as if any of these detections were unexpected, surprising, or not planned for.

          Maybe I'm mis

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by HiThere ( 15173 )

            ISTR that they have multiple times announced signals detected that later turned out to be astrophysical signals. But perhaps those were from different groups.

          • One larger sphere we now know does not contain technological life that is announcing itself to us, even if the odds of that were small, we have now confirmed that number to a certainty.

            We most certainly have not confirmed this. It's probably true that there's no one out there jumping up and down screaming, "HEY! HELLO OUT THERE! MEET HOT SINGLES IN YOUR STELLAR NEIGHBORHOOD!" If there is, either we're shit at recognizing something they think is obvious or they're shit at sending something that we're able to

    • "ULLAAAAAAA!" run through a frequency analyser revealing a QR code. Which when scanned takes you to a rickroll.

  • Huh, cool idea (Score:3)

    by locater16 ( 2326718 ) on Thursday May 25, 2023 @03:31AM (#63549769)
    I'm rather down on a lot of the "search for aliens!!!" news stories. Simply because we can't actually see that far into space, in regards to any radio waves advanced aliens might reasonably be putting out. And our own "radio bubble" is so small and dim, compared to the size of the galaxy and likely statistics of habitable planets with advanced life, that it's quite probable no advanced alien civilization has "seen" us yet. I.E. the "where are all the aliens?!?" Drake Equation hypothesis are nonsense, they could easily just be wandering around galaxy wide and we'd have 0 clue.

    That being said, doing a "trial run" of a signal done in a simulated alien language from an actual distant planet through an atmosphere could actually provide useful information. Maybe it'll give everyone from the radio telescope astronomers to the linguistics researchers an idea of what they might be missing in searching for E.T. and what they could do better. Good job "artist".
  • I wonder how many people involved in the project have read His Master's Voice by Stanislaw Lem. An early assumption was (and remains) that maths will be the key. There's a problem already, as maths is a human language, developed by humans, created in order to generate solutions to human-oriented problems. 2D visual communication (cf, for example, Voyager - which also had the equivalent of an vinyl disc on board, or Contact as another example, or the arecibo message ) depends upon our sort of visual percept

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Until we find someone who is both sentient and doesn't use math (which even Jays use), I think that basic math is a pretty safe assumption. If you don't think it is, then what would you suggest?

      Every possible means of searching (for anything) depends on making some assumptions about how you will recognize what you are looking for, and where you will find it.

    • Fortunately our use of math is grounded in attempting to understand things that appear to be fundamental realities: namely, the quantum fields and their various interactions that we end up perceiving. We didn't invent the math that describes the propagation of electromagnetic waves, and any internally consistent language of sufficient complexity could describe the observed phenomena.

      • I am not sure that you understand the issue I raise: The way we perceive things are specific to us. It's not how 'fundamental' a reality such as 'quantum fields' are, as much as how they appear and how we perceive them. Even using the equipment we use (CERN, for example) is designed to work in a way that provides us with information in a manner that we understand. I would attempt counter-argue my position and say - look at a protein complex, or any basic chemical - the structure (in 3D space) is universa
  • As per subject line... Please keep pretentious wank away from all things.

  • Why would radio astronomers be pointing their telescopes at Mars anyway?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Because they try to cover the whole sky, and because they don't have a sharp focus. Also several of them aren't steerable, so they can only look in the direction they're built to point in.

  • âoeBe Sure To Drink Your Ovaltine.â

  • I thought the EU wanted to ban all encryption.

  • Alien Signal (Score:3)

    by cstacy ( 534252 ) on Thursday May 25, 2023 @09:59AM (#63550349)

    When decoded, it turned out to be a picture of Sigourney Weaver in her skivvies.

  • The Council of Elders released the news to the People, confirming the nefarious activities of one of the orbiting spy satellites of the vile invaders from the blue planet.

    K'Breel, Speaker for the Council of Elders addressed these concerns:

    The monstrous inhabitants of the blue planet continue to be thwarted in their mission to conquer our world! Even though one of their spying machines had sent an encrypted transmission in a fruitless attempt to hide their intentions from us, we have easily deciphered the message and confirmed that their surveillance still fails to detect our presence. Victory is ours!

    When an assistant scientist posited that it was merely an exercise for the blue worlders to better understand messages sent from other worlds, K'Breel had the offender suspended upside down with his gelsacs bolted to the ceiling.

  • There are many levels of understanding extra-terrestrial intelligence:

    Given a message, where we know the protocol and timing and source direction of delivery, decode and understand the message.
    Do the same without knowing where the message is coming from.
    Do the same without knowing time of delivery.
    Do the same without knowing the protocol.
    Do the same without knowing the medium of the communication, e.g., don't know the frequency, don't know whether modulation is frequency or amplitude or CDMA or something el

  • Daniela de Paulis, the current artist in residence at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California and the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia.

    Why do they even have an "artist in residence" at SETI and/or GBO -- both radio telescope facilities?

    • Why do they even have an "artist in residence" at SETI and/or GBO -- both radio telescope facilities?

      You mean to tell me, you DON'T have an artist in residence at your work? Do you work for philistines?

  • As long as the aliens transmit a signal that conforms to the unit test, we should be good!

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