'Strong signal' from sun-like star sparks alien speculation

[Garth]

Hear me now? 'Strong signal' from sun-like star sparks alien speculation

An international team of researchers is now examining the radio signal and its star, HD 164595 -- described in a paper by Italian astronomer Claudio Maccone and others as a "strong candidate for SETI" -- in the hopes of determining its origin.
"The signal from HD 164595 is intriguing, because it comes from the vicinity of a sun-like star, and if it's artificial, its strength is great enough that it was clearly made by a civilization with capabilities beyond those of humankind," astronomer Douglas Vakoch.

Interesting...

Wait though

But experts say it is highly unlikely to be a message from alien beings.

With only one signal you just can't tell, and it certainly doesn't come up to scratch as "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.". It might have been just the cleaner in the next room turning on the vacuum cleaner...

Garth

 

[Borg]

Saw this on the news last night. They had constant teasers saying that it was an alien signal, then on the actual segment, they finally stated that experts said that it was highly unlikely. I'm betting on the gravitational lensing probability.

 

[tionis]

The media likes to dangle the alien carrot a lot. I guess it's the way humans project their desperate need of finding out if we are alone unto every anomalous flash of light in the sky.

 

[litup]

The signal is 'coming from the vicinity' so they don't have the exact angle pegged down so it could be from another star or more likely, a reflection of something manmade at 11 Ghz, a kind of unlikely frequency for interstellar communications. They also must not have published the exact frequency because the other researchers mentioned 'we don't know the right frequency' so they have to hunt and peck around to find anything.

11 Ghz is suspiciously close to man made radar and planetary probe frequencies so it could just be a signal bouncing off a moon or satellite. News at 11 I guess.

If the frequency turns out to be say, 11.01100000 Ghz, the number alone would indicate human origin.

It would be more speculative if it was say 11.023210090022 Ghz or some such.

 

[tionis]

The WOW! signal was also speculated to be of man-made origin. I think they even asked the military, but they never fessed up.

 

[Rubidium_71]

From the Wiki article:
"Astronomer Nicholas Suntzeff of Texas A&M University stated that the signal is in a military frequency band, and that it could have been a satellite downlink, implying that some such systems may be kept secret and therefore would be unknown to SETI scientists."
Sounds like a plausible explanation right there. To receive such a strong signal, wouldn't an "alien civilization" have to deliberately direct it at us? That would mean they would have to be aware of our presence. Given the distance of a little over 94 light years, that seems unlikely.

 

[Chronos]

How might an alien civilization 94 light years away be aware of our existence given our inability to generate a reasonably detectable signal over such distances 94 years ago?

 

[davenn]

11 Ghz is suspiciously close to man made radar and planetary probe frequencies so it could just be a signal bouncing off a moon or satellite. News at 11 I guess.

is in amongst the satellite TV band ... 11 - 12 GHz is used for the local oscillator in the LNA down converters

If the frequency turns out to be say, 11.01100000 Ghz, the number alone would indicate human origin.

Why ? I strongly disagree with that
Any tech advanced society would use rounded numbers

It would be more speculative if it was say 11.023210090022 Ghz or some such.

That is more likely to be a naturally generated signal
Dave

 

[berkeman]

Any tech advanced society would use rounded numbers

But their "second" will likely be different from ours...

 

[1oldman2]

Here is the latest I've seen. http://www.space.com/33922-mysterious-seti-signal-earthly-cause.html

 

[OCR]

is in amongst the satellite TV band ... 11 - 12 GHz is used for the local oscillator in the LNA down converters

I think so... in the K_u band.

When we first splurged for "good TV", we had to buy two BUDs that used C-Band... it wasn't a bad system, it was all remote controlled from our houses, and every thing ( except the initial purchase; dishes and receivers were about $3,000, or more ? ... apiece ) including "feeds" , was free....

Of course broadcasters couldn't stand that, so after awhile we had to buy these damn things ....

Lol, I went of topic a bit... and we don't use the system anymore, but they are still standing... here's picture.

 

[Rubidium_71]

@OCR My Grandfather had one of those too. As you say, it worked ok for a while before they scrambled everything. It went along with his house when we sold it, a curiosity more than anything else.

 

[Ken G]

How might an alien civilization 94 light years away be aware of our existence given our inability to generate a reasonably detectable signal over such distances 94 years ago?

I think you mean 188 years ago! But I believe the idea is, the aliens in question would not know we are here, they would merely see us as a good candidate and would be sending signals like that to all the good candidates. Not that this signal is anything special, I'm sure they've detected many signals like this in the past, that never amounted to anything. It must have been a slow news cycle.

 

[newjerseyrunner]

How might an alien civilization 94 light years away be aware of our existence given our inability to generate a reasonably detectable signal over such distances 94 years ago?

You meant 188 years ago.

I think it's most likely a military signal. I keep hearing strong candidate. What exactly about it makes it a strong candidate? What is a strong candidate? From the distance, it's not possible that they are aware that we are a radio civilization and have sent us a response. That means that for some reason they decided to target a (to them) pre-industrial planet. Or they sent it out in all directions which would require a level II civilization. Or, we just happened to be in the middle of a signal, what's in the exact opposite position of the sky?

Things like this has got me thinking though. How many real signals will we detect before we will even be able to verify one? I imagine a inventor in a small isolated island tribe learning how to do radio communications. They'd likely detect a lot of noise from our global civilization before they realized what it was. They'd get intermittent signals from boats or planes that constantly move so can never be verified. An interstellar civilization would likely appear fairly quite unless you're directly between two "hubs." If humans set up a colony around the Barnard star, you will not be able to hear anything if listening from Alpha Centauri. You'd hear pretty much dead silence unless you happened to get right in between the stars at which point you'd probably get a deluge.

 

[Chronos]

Ageed. I neglected to allow for the light travel time for response to any signal already 94 years old when received by the 'aliens'.

 

[rootone]

The media likes to dangle the alien carrot a lot. I guess it's the way humans project their desperate need of finding out if we are alone unto every anomalous flash of light in the sky.

Yes, most ancient civilization observed planets in our solar system and immediately concluded that they were indications of other life, even gods.

 

[OCR]

My Grandfather had one of those too.

Uh... how old are you ?.. ... lol.

 

[Rubidium_71]

Uh... how old are you ?.. ... lol.

No so much old as Ye Olde. ;)
He bought his is the early 1980's as I recall. By about 1989 or so it couldn't really pick up much anymore.

 

[Sue Rich]

How might an alien civilization 94 light years away be aware of our existence given our inability to generate a reasonably detectable signal over such distances 94 years ago?

They (if there is a they) could be doing the same thing we are. Sending and listening for signals in different sections of the universe.

 

[Garth]

They (if there is a they) could be doing the same thing we are. Sending and listening for signals in different sections of the universe.

Sending signals might turn out to be a pretty risky business, you never know who might turn up!

Having said that we have been broadcasting powerful radio and tv transmissions into the aether for some time now (not to HD 164595 though)... wait, on second thoughts that explains why nobody has bothered to answer.

Garth

 

[CraigHB]

There's the assumption this other race we're trying to detect is using the same kind of radio we do. So there's all the random factors involved plus the requirement of similar technology. Our level of technology would be infantile relative to the level other races could achieve considering the age of the universe. Likely they would use more energetic forms of radiation to communicate or even mediums we're not aware of yet. So they would have to be aware of our existence and direct signals they know we can hear. Otherwise they would have to be in the same situation as us looking for radio signals in space from other sentient races. The window is small to detect a race at that level of technology as they'd likely advance past it quickly in terms of cosmological time spans. It's like finding a needle in a stack of haystacks. Still you never know, events with even the smallest chance sometimes still happen.

 

[Chronos]

Sending signals might turn out to be a pretty risky business, you never know who might turn up!

Having said that we have been broadcasting powerful radio and tv transmissions into the aether for some time now (not to HD 164595 though)... wait, on second thoughts that explains why nobody has bothered to answer.

Garth

Perhaps our best hope is they will turn out to be just like us ... er, never mind.

 

[rootone]

I doubt that broadcast transmissions would be detectable amongst background noise beyond around 10ly.
Disregrading that though, aliens would presumably draw conclusions based on the most frequently observed content in the signals.
The Simpsons?

 

[CraigHB]

The Simpsons?

Haha, if another sentient race actually decoded our signals and viewed our television, they would probably think we're all crazy and not worth the effort to contact.

 

[TurtleMeister]

According to the SETI website, a transmission of this magnitude would require an enormous amount of power.

http://www.seti.org/seti-institute/a-seti-signal

(1) They decide to broadcast in all directions. Then the required power is 100 billion billion watts. That’s hundreds of times more energy than all the sunlight falling on Earth, and would obviously require power sources far beyond any we have.

(2) They aim their transmission at us. This will reduce the power requirement, but even if they are using an antenna the size of the 1000-foot Arecibo instrument, they would still need to wield more than a trillion watts, which is comparable to the total energy consumption of all humankind.

 

[berkeman]

According to the SETI website, a transmission of this magnitude would require an enormous amount of power.

http://www.seti.org/seti-institute/a-seti-signal

Thanks for getting this thread back on topic. Let's all try to remember the OP topic in our replies in this thread. Thanks.

 

[newjerseyrunner]

According to the SETI website, a transmission of this magnitude would require an enormous amount of power.

http://www.seti.org/seti-institute/a-seti-signal

I'd like a sense of scale and comparing it to human technology seems dumb, what natural events cause power outputs at those scales?

 

[lpetrich]

That is, 10²⁰ watts Effective Isotropic Radiated Power and 10¹² watts if directed at the Earth by a telescope the size of Arecibo's 300-m telescope.

However, that EIRP is only 0.16 watts if the source is in geostationary orbit, about 36,000 km from the Earth's center. This is well within the plausible electric-power budgets of most artificial satellites. 1 m^2 of solar panel at 10% efficiency and a 50% orientation factor give 50 watts of electricity.

As to the 94-light-year distance, this means an 186-year round-trip time, and the signal senders would have observed the Earth as it was in 1827. That was long before we started doing radio broadcasts.

 

[TurtleMeister]

This was probably interference from a Russian satellite.
http://tass.com/science/896683

 

[Planobilly]

"Sending signals might turn out to be a pretty risky business, you never know who might turn up!"

Well...perhaps we don't even know who is already here...lol

On July 8, 1947, witnesses claim a spaceship with five aliens aboard crashed on a sheep-and-cattle ranch outside Roswell, the next day Al Gore was born...draw your own conclusion. Just sayin...lol

source: http://www.jokes4us.com/peoplejokes/alienjokes.html

Cheers,

Billy