Has riddle of the 1977 'Wow!' signal finally been cracked? Maybe... The mystery of the "Wow!" signal, a radio burst recorded from outer space in the 1970s, may been solved. Or not. Not everyone is convinced. The 72-second signal was spotted at 1,420MHz on August 15, 1977 by Astronomer Jerry Ehman at Ohio State University's Big Ear radio telescope. It was so clear that he scribbled Wow! in the …
Laydeez an gennelmen,
We bring you one shit-load of conspiracy theories, 'space tech cover up', 'Illuminati keeps us dumb' etc, etc. as those who look towards the stars for salvation have yet another route closed.
I guess it's back to the 'dolphin speakers' and 'alien contactors' to get back to work (there's a flock to be fleeced).
" Astronomers will continue to check the results to see if other comets exhibit the same behavior."
They do. This article already said "... and that other comets also emitted similar emissions."
And another article at phys.org also mentions "To verify their results, they tested readings from three other comets, as well, and found similar results."
So comet poots raised a stink cuz they didn't know who dunnit. Now we'll be watching for those 'cropdusting' jokers.
I'll wait for their work to be peer reviewed and replicated several times before I agree with their conclusions. I find it difficult to take their thesis as wrote, perhaps something to do with them stating "We speculate..." as opposed to "Our rigourous testing has proven..."
Essentially they only have speculation, not a proof or theory.
That's theory in the scientific sense, not the common usage.
67P has been found to emit EM signals - totally unexpected at the time, it has to be said. They're still speculating on the precise cause, but the effect is real.
Well what do ya know? Seems that astronomers and astrophysicists are saying the guy is full of crap, helped along with a hefty dollop of "Oh look he's started a kickstarter page to scam people for drug money funds." as opposed to seeking legit funding.
Always wait for the peer review and study replication.
Don't take to so hard, there's almost certainly life out there. It might just be slime mold at the moment or maybe it has already gone extinct or well, you get the idea. Given the distance, we'll probably never contact it since the whole syn/ack thing would take a generation or more and that's only if they (we?) are smart enough. The cockroaches who will evolve, become sentient, and take over earth in our stead will have a much easier time of it because they'll be more likely to speak the same language.
There was a recent edition of Horizon (which seems, at least on the occasional programs I've watched recently to be returning to form) covering the search for extraterristrial life and one of the sections was on the "Wow" event and had this new research as now being seen as the explanation. Other initially unexpected transmissions were found to be due to people cooking snacks in the microwave at a radio telescope centre etc. Last example which still seemed not to be explained was the hypothesis that observations indicated construction of a Dyson sphere in a galaxy far far away
Dyson sphere in a galaxy far far away
Is that a garbled reference to Tabby's Star?
If so, it's not in a far galaxy, it's just 1000 ly or so away.
If there was construction, one would indeed expect to see evidence of: gamma ray emissions, radio blasts weird spectral lines (earth masses of water, oxygen and chloropyll?), and people yelling at each other in languages from the Galactic South. But, nothing.
"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying." ®
I don't think so. There can be thousands of technologically advanced civilisations in the rest of the universe and it would make no difference to us whatsoever. All the tests we've done so far have supported Einstein's theories (the latest from Ars: https://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2017/06/einstein-still-annoyingly-right-as-researchers-weigh-white-dwarf/) so the speed of light is still the limit.
That means realistically, our chances of communicating with any civilisation more than a hundred light years away is pretty much zero. And space is way bigger than that*. Even if we only consider our own galaxy, there's room for dozens of civilisations like us, all of which are too far away for us to talk to in any meaningful time frame. So not so terrifying after all.
*Douglas Adams quote goes here.
The problem with the analysis is the assumption that our current theories are the final word on interstellar travel. It is more likely our current theories are woefully incomplete but we have no idea how woeful right now. With that in mind, we really do not know if there are any more advanced civilizations in the universe or not. Nor can we prove either we are alone or there many.
It is more likely our current theories are woefully incomplete
I beg to differ. There is strong evidence that our current theories, though more "effective" than "fundamental", are quite complete indeed.
There is tons of things to work out and possibly a complete remodeling will be needed, but the speed of light is quite the fulcrum of everything.
Agreed. The odds of there being a viable short-cut across the gulf between the stars are exceedingly low. We don't know everything about the Universe as yet, but I people tend to underestimate how much we do know about the physical laws that govern it. Einstein modified Newton in edge cases, anything that improves on Einstein will be similarly limited in scope.
Our best hope for galactic colonisation lies with combining sub-light travel with some form of suspended animation and/or life-extension -- perhaps a ship loaded with frozen embryos to be raised by an AI at the destination. Who knows?
All I know is that absent an intervention from a much more advanced technological species (and if they're reading this -- what's the hold up?), we're going to be stuck on this rock called Earth for a very long time to come.
"Our best hope for galactic colonisation lies with combining sub-light travel with some form of suspended animation and/or life-extension -- perhaps a ship loaded with frozen embryos to be raised by an AI at the destination. Who knows?"
Sorry, but I feel that's a bit pessimistic.
World ships, capable of carrying populations in the millions with accompanying ecosystems, moving from one icy/rocky body to the next for resources, building new ships as needed, seems an option we could do now.
A vast, expanding cloud of humanity, or post humanity, each ship in constant contact with neighboring ships.
Eventually, they'd cross the Oort cloud and reach other solar systems, in a timeframe of eons.
The odds of there being a viable short-cut across the gulf between the stars are exceedingly low.
Another thing they couldn't stand was the perpetual failure they encountered while trying to construct a machine which could generate the infinite improbability field needed to flip a spaceship across the mind-paralyzing distances between the farthest stars, and at the end of the day they grumpily announced that such a machine was virtually impossible.
Then, one day, a student who had been left to sweep up after a particularly unsuccessful party found himself reasoning in this way: If, he thought to himself, such a machine is a virtual impossibility, it must have finite improbability. So all I have to do in order to make one is to work out exactly how improbable it is, feed that figure into the finite improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of really hot tea... and turn it on!
There is tons of things to work out and possibly a complete remodeling will be needed, but the speed of light is quite the fulcrum of everything.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented" or words to that effect, about a hundred years ago.
I'm optimistic that there is stuff yet to be discovered. Largely because of the number of times in the past we've heard that 'there is nothing more to be discovered'.
We were at the limits of computing long before smart phones were invented, man could never travel faster than 30Mph (or whatever the speed was), 4 minute mile will never be broken and so on and so forth. We could stop all funding on science of course, since it's all been done and only a few crackpots really want to push it further. Or we could try pushing the boundaries.
Mine's the one with 6 atoms in the pocket from Burns Atom Smashing.
From the paper:
The data collected was saved using the spreadsheet output format option of the SpectraCyber software and imported into Microsoft Excel as a text file. The data were then replotted and interpreted using the Chart Wizard feature in Microsoft Excel and converted into JPEG format.
All kidding aside, I Googled "SpectraCyber" and discovered it's open source and on GitHub. Three cheers to the astroboffins!
The article never mentioned whether there were aliens driving the comets or not.
The intergalactic version of Uber have been illegally testing driverless comets in this sector of the galaxy unfortunately, but only a few planets have been destroyed, and none of them had voters on, so it's not too much of a problem.
Ok, not trying to push any sort of alien signal cover up conspiracy theory, just a couple of questions that the article didn't address (ok, I'll admit I've not read the full paper, does that explain?)
From memory, there were two dishes pointed at the same location, slightly offset. If it was comets, surely the other dish should have picked up the same signal a couple of minutes before or after? Or is the signal not constant but changes as the comet spins? (for instance)
I gather the scientists pointed the dishes back at the same point and surrounding space repeatedly afterwards without picking up the signal again, surely comets don't move sufficiently fast to be nowhere near the next night, or even weeks later? So why was nothing picked up?
It seems most likely that if a comet that has since been shown to be emitting a signal at that frequency was in the same place at the same time, it's probably responsible. But doesn't answer those questions.
Just looking on wikipedia, the article on this event references this paper but says it doesn't answer the first question, and says (but cites no sources) that Ehman and his colleagues think it highly unlikely to explain the signal. Not that they're biased.
"This paper was also just really, really, really short on details that a radio astronomer would want, to the point where it likely wouldn't have passed a referee at a regular journal," said Yvette Cendes, a skeptical radio astronomer at the University of Toronto.
It would be really nice to think that the persons who SHOULD be the experts were right, but how many times has science been held back by group-think among the 'experts' until their noses were rubbed in the clear and definite truth?
There are many points about the paper, which are awkward.
1 - Unusual journal for radio astronomy, (significant issues with the authenticity of the journal and its referees)
2 - Use of units of signal strength from comms not radio astronomy
3 - No mention of location, background contamination data no supplied/measured
4 - Heavy use of person resume
5 - Minimal calibration data
6 - Insufficient data to reproduce the comet data
7 - et alia
One or two of these can be overlooked if the others are present, but not all of them. Go read the reddit post for a full description of the short comings of this paper.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Andromeda321/comments/6gal8v/no_the_wow_signal_was_probably_not_caused_by/
Funny really. When something that flies in the face of established science and physics is brought to light, all scientists everywhere will immediately demand peer-reviewed duplication before they'll even consider the idea.
Yet something like the Wow signal, which has been completely without explanation all this time, suddenly gets one, without peer-reviewed duplication, and all the scientists say 'Yes'. Because that's the way it goes.
It's only possible if it fits. Like the time the Earth was the centre of the universe. Or that time when the Earth was flat. History repeats, regardless how people don't want it to.
MAXO signals: A new and unfortunate solution to the Fermi paradox
This is seriously tongue-in-cheek
Really? The "not buying it" quote comes from someone claiming to be an astronomer on Reddit, of all places, who apparently doesn't even realise that the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences actually is a perfectly respectable peer reviewed journal. Their entire argument, other than failing to recognise the journal, is that the paper doesn't give the exact specifications of the dish, which isn't actually relevant at all - if it's capable of picking up the frequencies under investigation, that's all that matters. If someone else tried to replicate the study they might get a stronger or weaker signal with a different dish, but it's the presence of a signal at all that is relevant to the study, and the information required to replicate that certainly is in the paper.
That comets emit radio waves is not in question (there are other peer reviewed articles covering this), what is in question is this particular article and author.
A small but important question for you - where is the authors proof that the WOW signal matches that of the comet?
I'll save you the search, there isn't any. The author speculates that there is a match, although the signal does not in fact match and the author resorts to hand waving, giving several different solutions as to the variance stating that any one of them could be the factor.... or maybe even a mixture of them. This is not science. A scientist would work at the problem until they found an answer so they could state that the variance is due to X, not fire off that maybe, possibly if you squint real hard it could be X, Y or Z but maybe its X + Y to the the third power of Z's cousin twice removed but I can resolve this maybe/possibly if you donate on my kickstarter page.....
Professional astronomers are such killjoys. Wow signal? Comets, not aliens. Tabby's star? Probably comets or asteroids, not aliens. Streaks of light outside the ISS? Lens flares, not aliens. Anal probes? Drunk rednecks, not aliens (actually, I'm kinda glad that one's not aliens...I don't think I'd be interested in meeting an "advanced" species that obsessed over another species rectums to the point of kidnapping people just to stick something up their butts).
Ah well. Sooner or later something's gonna be aliens. Probably. I hope.
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