OK folks, first of all, stop emailing me about this! Aiiieeee!
Second, the deal is that there are rumors floating around the ether that some sort of signal was picked up by the Arecibo radio telescope, and that folks from SETI (the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) are working on it.
I have left messages with some friends of mine at SETI, and if/when they call me back I’ll let you all know what I know.
Until then, feel free to speculate, but also be prepared to find out that this was all made up, exaggerated, or misinterpreted.
Or it might be real. Tee hee! We’ll know soon enough.
January 16th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Man, that article is rather short on details…let us know more when you can!
January 16th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
You know, it’s like the news of the UFOs in Texas we had this week.
…It’s probably exaggerated and misinterpreted. Must be the russians again! Silly silly russians!
January 16th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
The article itself doesn’t seem all that genuine to me, to be quite honest. Oh well, the headline was good for a three-second thrill.
January 16th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
I don’t have my hopes up, but I’ll keep my ears/eyes piqued.
January 16th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Short on details indeed! What a terrible article. The information which is actually “new” consists of the first sentence:
“Across the globe, researchers searching for signs of life in space were abuzz this week with word that a mystery signal has been picked up by a giant radio-telescope in Puerto Rico.”
Then there’s some stock fluff.
But I want to believe.
January 16th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Yeah, probably nothing… It would be cool if it was a new natural phenomenon, though.
January 16th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Hmmmph, nothing about it on the SETI website, so its probably just junk journalism. I hate it when non-sci people try to do sci articles without a clue as to what they are writing.
January 16th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Hoping it’s true, but not holding my breath.
Either way, thanks for posting about this. I promise not to spread the rumor any further until it’s substantiated or refuted.
January 16th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
We should reply with “42″, maybe they’ll send us the question then.
January 16th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Hello, hello…? is there anybody out there??? Oh, never mind, it’s just Earth. Quick, stop transmitting!!
January 16th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
It’s not aliens. . . the pulsars are just getting angry.
January 16th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
I just reinstalled seti@home on my computer this week after a 4 year hiatus. What a coincidence. Or maybe not? What if it’s a rumour designed to increase interest and bring more people to contribute to seti@home?
January 16th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
What rumor do you need besides the Drake equation to want to contribute to SETI
January 16th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
The question is, “What do you get when you multiply six by nine?”
January 16th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Umm … evidence of a non-advanced civilization?
January 16th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Oh Sh*t!
It’s god, and he is pissed..
Romney overtook his man Huckabee..
It’s the only logical explanation….
January 16th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Yes,
I’m wondering if this article is itself the source of the “rumor,” the snake biting it’s own tail for a punchy intro line? That, or some other miscommunication, I’m 99.9999% sure. But, despite my skepticism, I too want to believe!
January 16th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
The message is, “PLEASE! Quit broadcasting William Shatner singing! We can’t take it anymore! Our civilization is on the verge of total collapse. STOP IT!”
January 16th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
I’m betting when they finally decode it, the message will be:
“To Serve Man”
January 16th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Those fools – I told them to stay radio silent until the fleet
could assemble behind the Moon!
I mean, uh… oh wow, an alien signal, yah!
I am sure they will be friendly. When the giant battleships -
I mean happy, non-threatening silver craft from a peace-loving
planet – land on your puny planet – I mean wonderful, not ever
going to be destroyed world – just greet them with open
tentacles – I mean arms!
January 16th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
The biggest event in history and it is broken by local TV news? Somehow I doubt it, since local news is replete with misinformed sensationalist headlines. If you read beyond the first sentence every quote sounds like a response to the general question “what happens if we do get a signal?” rather than a response to a specific incident, and nearly everything is in the future tense. It sounds like they needed to fill thirty seconds between their piece on tiger attacks and everything you eat that is killing you right now.
January 16th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
I’ve checked around Yahoo, CNN, and BBC news. Nothing on this story. Something this massive wouldn’t stay buried on a local news website for long.
Color me skeptical in this case. I want to believe though, I really do. Besides, I’m about halfway through “Childhood’s End” by Clarke so it’s on my mind anyway.
January 16th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080114110715.htm
It’s “just” this they’re mumbojumboing about.
“Astronomers from Arecibo Observatory radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, have detected for the first time the molecules methanimine and hydrogen cyanide — two ingredients that build life-forming amino acids — in a galaxy some 250 million light years away.”
January 16th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
This looks like a rerun of a 2004 ‘episode’ reporting a 2003 signal. See:-
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6341
Anybody found anything more recent?
January 16th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
I think RealitySucks might be on to something there. It’s easy to imagine a reporter hearing about the “frequencies” and not understanding that the frequencies in question are to do with a spectral analysis, and thinking “well, that must mean ’signal.’”
January 16th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Centauri Dreams says “nay”:
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=1677
“Just off the phone with Seth Shostak, I can report that the KTVU story discussed below about a possible SETI reception is bogus. Apparently the reporter involved misinterpreted the conversation, as we had surmised. We may get a successful reception of an extraterrestrial civilization one of these days, but this wasn’t it.”
January 16th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Somebody call Tom Cruise and tell him the signal is a message from Xenu.
“Tom, saw you on youtube. Ha Ha Ha!
-Xenu”
January 16th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
I noticed the article completely blows past verifying the “signal” as extraterrestrial and artificial and having other telescopes replicate the detection. It just goes on to paint is as if it is definitely from intelligent aliens and all that remains to do is to “decode” it and decide how to answer.
VACUOUS (like the space between us and the “signal”)!
January 16th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Are there any radio astronomers in the bad astronomy readers? I’ve always wanted to hear a professional opinion on the “ET’s watching I Love Lucy” idea. Is that plausable at all?
Just from fundamental photon counting and signal/noise considerations, what kind of equipment would you need to pick up, say, a 1MW signal at 10’s of light years? Does the interstellar medium attenuate radio frequencies to any significant extend?
I once read somewhere (Scientific American, maybe) that if there was a civilization just like us around Alpha Centuri, we wouldn’t know about it. Is that true?
January 16th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Yes, there are some radio astronomers here. No, it’s not our methanimine detection that set off the rumours (although it’s also been misinterpreted in a few places), it’s a different signal (see Phil’s later blog entry).
Our technology here is such that we could only pick up a deliberate signal – we couldn’t see the Alpha Centauri version of ‘I love Lucy’, only their version of the ‘Arecibo Signal’.
1 MW is the strength of the Earth’s most powerful signal – the Arecibo S-band radar. That could be detected to a fair distance (depending on the size and sensitivity of the receivers) – if people are looking in the right band. However, if the aliens have followed the same logic as the SETI folk here and are looking at L-band (the ‘water hole’ band containing the H (1420MHz) and OH (1667MHz) lines), they wouldn’t see us (it is, in fact, an astronomy-protected band where transmission is not allowed).
January 16th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
The article mentions possibilities for a return message. I think we should send them a recipe for a tasty snack. You know, nothing says “Please don’t invade our planet and enslave our civilization” quite like a recipe for delicious cake.
January 16th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
@Bob:
The cake is a lie.
(but they won’t know that. teehee)
BA: “The story you are trying to view is no longer available through this Web site.”
Looks like they took it down. Whether due to /.ing or it being totally bogus, who can say? e_e
January 16th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Let’s hope their favorite book is NOT something called “To Serve Man.”
January 16th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
“Hello, this is deposed Galactic Prince Jzzzzzphlopsk. I have lost my kingdom and need your help. Send 78 quadrillion Space Dollars to the following off-planet account and you will be repayed greatly”
January 17th, 2008 at 4:56 am
TomR writes:
[[I once read somewhere (Scientific American, maybe) that if there was a civilization just like us around Alpha Centuri, we wouldn’t know about it. Is that true?]]
Quite possibly. Our TV signals get out of the atmosphere and are now quite far away, but they would be extremely faint even by the time they got to Alpha Centauri. Dr. Plait? Could aliens on Alpha Centauri A II pick up the signals from the DEW line or something of the sort? Or would they need an antenna larger than a planet?
January 17th, 2008 at 11:02 am
There is a very interesting article that was written years ago on this subject:
http://www.bigear.org/CSMO/PDF/CS05/cs05p28.pdf
Scroll down to the section labeled:
B. The Solar System Signature. How Our Solar System Would Appear to an Observer at a Distant Star
There’s a very interesting chart here which shows that humanity’s television broadcasts could be detectible out to 1 light-year. Unfortunately there are no other star systems that close. However our early warning radar signals could be detected at a distance of 100 light-years and our planetary radar signals could be detected out to a distance of almost 10,000 light-years. Of course, these last two signals are very directional so the receiving civilization would have to be by chance in the beam of the signal which is probably not very likely. I wonder if the Wow! signal of 1977 was a similar case, a planetary radar beam sweeping the sky which just happened to interesect Earth.
January 17th, 2008 at 11:23 am
ET, phone home!
January 18th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
[[I wonder if the Wow! signal of 1977 was a similar case, a planetary radar beam sweeping the sky which just happened to interesect Earth.]]
I wonder about that thing. I’ve heard, unofficially, that they’ve detected about 30 similar signals from elsewhere in the sky, but like the first, they were never repeated.
The WOW signal was about four milliseconds long and patterned at the microsecond level. My first thought when I heard that was, “4,096 bits.” Are we picking up data packets sent by alien computers or space probes? If so, it would tend to confirm that the speed of light limit is absolute and that there’s nothing better than radio to be discovered, so I sincerely hope it turns out to be some natural phenomenon.
January 30th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Signal or no signal, they are out there and i know it.. ive seen it myself, and one day we will all know it.. just have a little faith and keep living life and something will happen soon..