An electrifying outcome.
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 …
COMMENTS
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Saturday 10th June 2017 08:21 GMT Elmer Phud
Roll up, roll up
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).
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Saturday 10th June 2017 08:26 GMT Notas Badoff
Hey, what's that smell?
" 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.
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Saturday 10th June 2017 10:06 GMT james 68
I'll wait thanks.
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.
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Saturday 10th June 2017 11:53 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I'll wait thanks.
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.
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Monday 12th June 2017 10:55 GMT james 68
Re: I'll wait thanks.
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 moneyfunds." as opposed to seeking legit funding.Always wait for the peer review and study replication.
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Sunday 11th June 2017 00:57 GMT Eddy Ito
Re: I wish this wasn't true.
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.
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Saturday 10th June 2017 11:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
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
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Saturday 10th June 2017 18:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
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.
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Saturday 10th June 2017 13:45 GMT gizmo23
Arthur C. Clarke quote
"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.
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Saturday 10th June 2017 14:30 GMT a_yank_lurker
Re: Arthur C. Clarke quote
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.
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Saturday 10th June 2017 18:06 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Re: Arthur C. Clarke quote
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.
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Saturday 10th June 2017 21:28 GMT tacitust
Re: Arthur C. Clarke quote
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.
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Sunday 11th June 2017 17:50 GMT Captain DaFt
Re: Arthur C. Clarke quote
"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.
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Monday 12th June 2017 11:41 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Arthur C. Clarke quote
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!
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Monday 12th June 2017 10:20 GMT Kiwi
Re: Arthur C. Clarke quote
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.
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Saturday 10th June 2017 21:43 GMT Gene Cash
The finest scientific processing software
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!