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

theguardian.com

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

#21

Post by acqq »

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...

Wouldn't it be more important to have the comet similarly distant to the Sun?

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

#22

Post by makomk »

dak1 wrote: post #17

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

There do appear to be a number of rather alarming discoveries by people in the Guardian comments section pointing in that direction, yeah.

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

#24

Post by makomk »

joneser005 wrote: post #23

Did they not find the source of the signal last year? http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/10/rogue-mic...

Nah, they knew that those signals were local in origin and the Wow signal wasn't because the perytons showed up no matter which direction they looked in whilst the Wow signal was only received on one of the two antenna at the site.

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

#25

Post by samstave »

jdmichal wrote: post #20
ceejayoz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Forgive the naive question, but why is space so empty.

I mean I understand infinite but I'm just really interested in why the universe is the way that it is.

What is the best theory for this? Has anyone proposed a why?

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

#26

Post by alsertia »

allemagne wrote: post #15

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.

>Is this a correct understanding?

No. That is a five-year-old's understanding of how science works. HN's readership quality has definitely declined if every phenomenon without an obvious explanation is immediately attributed to "aliens" or "beyond our understanding of the cosmos."

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

#27

Post by hodwik »

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.

LunaSea is making an interesting argument that I hadn't considered.

You on the other hand have levied a substance-less complaint about a user's attitude. Who is really undermining discourse here?

Pessimism ought to be welcome here. If you need protection from other people's attitudes go join a university safe space.

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

#28

Post by ChrisGranger »

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"

You're getting downvoted into oblivion for the snarkiness of your post, but I'm inclined to agree with you based on things said in the comments at the end of the article, especially by user bllchkchps.

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

#29

Post by breadbox »

samstave wrote: post #25
jdmichal wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Forgive the naive question, but why is space so empty. I mean I understand infinite but I'm just really interested in why the universe is the way that it is. What is the best theory for this? Has anyone proposed a why?

Space was less empty when it was younger, so I suppose you could say that the answer to your question is "because it's over 13 billion years old."

But really, "why" questions like this come with too many hidden assumptions to be helpful. You need to clarify why you expect it to not be empty. The way I see it, you could just as easily ask why is space so full of stuff as it is.

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

#30

Post by maze-le »

samstave wrote: post #25
jdmichal wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Forgive the naive question, but why is space so empty. I mean I understand infinite but I'm just really interested in why the universe is the way that it is. What is the best theory for this? Has anyone proposed a why?

Because the universe is expanding. Space itself expands the further away you are from a reference point. That means, everything is moving away from us (on a grand scale), and the greater the distance to the reference point, the bigger is the rate things in the universe are moving away from us. I think the rate is about 70 km/(Mpcs) - wich is an incredibly small number, scaled down to a meter it is ~10^-23 m / (ms). And as space expands over time, the density of matter in space get lower and lower.
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