New effort to study astronomical ‘wow’ signal after almost 40 years • Hacker News Board

Re: New effort to study astronomical ‘wow’ signal after almost 40 years

#11

Post by TrainedMonkey » Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 5:19 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #8

TrainedMonkey wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not think it matters how unlikely it is. As long as it is possible and there is no surefire culprit the theory needs to be tested, if only to rule it out.

"Probable" and "unlikely" are antonyms. It can't be unlikely and probable. edit: The level of likeliness should affect the amount of effort put into testing the hypothesis. I'd like an explanation from them on why they think the Wow! signal is so rare if a comet is the explanation - NASA says there might be as many as a hundred billion comets in the solar system, so "where's the rest of their signals" is a legit crit…

Thanks, fixed.

Re: New effort to study astronomical ‘wow’ signal after almost 40 years

#12

Post by interfixus » Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 5:21 PM UTC

August the 15th, 1977, signal received. Next day, Elvis dies.

That's just too good of a nutcase story not to be in circulation.

Re: New effort to study astronomical ‘wow’ signal after almost 40 years

#13

Post by e0m » Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 5:26 PM UTC

It's amazing how manual this process still was in the late 70s. Imagine spending hours and hours pouring over tables of numbers. At the same time, it's amazing how hard it still is for computers to say "that's interesting". Sometimes it takes human to go "wow"

Re: New effort to study astronomical ‘wow’ signal after almost 40 years

#14

Post by TillE » Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 5:32 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #4

LunaSea wrote: post #2

"How a team of astronomers embezzled crowd funders into buying them a new telescope by making them believe they will look for a 'Wow' signal explanation"

That's so nastily uncharitable. I understand the fun in painting what people are doing in the blackest possible colors. It's a parlor game and gives a buzz to both the writer and reader. But in doing so, you smear black paint all over the parlor. We're trying to make HN a better place to be than that, so please don't play that game here.

> That's so nastily uncharitable.

> It's a parlor game and gives a buzz to both the writer and reader.

Uh...

I agree that it's a rude and pointless comment, but there's really no reason to go so far with the armchair psychoanalysis.

Re: New effort to study astronomical ‘wow’ signal after almost 40 years

#15

Post by allemagne » Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 5:34 PM UTC

So if being a byproduct of comets is ruled out, and we take it for granted that the signal is of extra-terrestrial origin (which apparently has been pretty much accepted), then we don't have an explanation for the origin under our current understanding of the cosmos? Is this a correct understanding? How exciting.

Re: New effort to study astronomical ‘wow’ signal after almost 40 years

#16

Post by allemagne » Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 5:41 PM UTC

TillE wrote: post #14

dang wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's so nastily uncharitable. I understand the fun in painting what people are doing in the blackest possible colors. It's a parlor game and gives a buzz to both the writer and reader. But in doing so, you smear black paint all over the parlor. We're trying to make HN a better place to be than that, so please don't play that game here.

> That's so nastily uncharitable. > It's a parlor game and gives a buzz to both the writer and reader. Uh... I agree that it's a rude and pointless comment, but there's really no reason to go so far with the armchair psychoanalysis.

What strikes you as being particularly psychoanalytic about it? The comment is certainly taking an unnecessarily cynical view of the topic, and doing so is almost always intended to position the author and those who he persuades as superior (i.e. "giving them a buzz").

Re: New effort to study astronomical ‘wow’ signal after almost 40 years

#17

Post by dak1 » Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 5:45 PM UTC

This looks like a con job using pseudo-science to get money from well-intentioned individuals.

Re: New effort to study astronomical ‘wow’ signal after almost 40 years

#18

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 5:48 PM UTC

TrainedMonkey wrote: post #10

pavel_lishin wrote: post #6

> Comet 266P/Christensen will pass the Chi Sagittarii star group again on 25 January 2017, while 335P/Gibbs will make its passage on 7 January 2018. Paris plans to observe these events to look for a recurrence of the mystery signal. But time is not on his side for using an existing radio telescope – they are all booked out. Can someone explain why he needs to observe them when they're passing in front of those partic…

I think the point is to reproduce as much of the original conditions as possible and check for a similar signature. The paper itself, does not explain the need for exact conditions: http://planetary-science.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Pari...

[deleted]

Re: New effort to study astronomical ‘wow’ signal after almost 40 years

#19

Post by dipnuggetron » Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 5:50 PM UTC

LunaSea wrote: post #2

"How a team of astronomers embezzled crowd funders into buying them a new telescope by making them believe they will look for a 'Wow' signal explanation"

Just be glad gofundme isn't a YC portfolio company. That would have earned you a full shadowban.

Re: New effort to study astronomical ‘wow’ signal after almost 40 years

#20

Post by jdmichal » Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 5:55 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #8

TrainedMonkey wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not think it matters how unlikely it is. As long as it is possible and there is no surefire culprit the theory needs to be tested, if only to rule it out.

"Probable" and "unlikely" are antonyms. It can't be unlikely and probable. edit: The level of likeliness should affect the amount of effort put into testing the hypothesis. I'd like an explanation from them on why they think the Wow! signal is so rare if a comet is the explanation - NASA says there might be as many as a hundred billion comets in the solar system, so "where's the rest of their signals" is a legit crit…

I think it's important to remember how empty space actually is, when taking this view point. For instance, an object randomly shot through the asteroid belt has near zero chance of actually hitting anything, and that's a relatively dense space. The Oort cloud, which is where a large number of the theoretically unknown comets live, is only about 5 Earth masses.

The bottom line is, pointing a telescope to a random spot in the sky is very, very likely to find nothing. Even with a billion comets and a billion asteroids and a billion stars.