Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 77 posts

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

#31

Post by breadbox »

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…

Some current evidence suggests that "because this is a scam."

https://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/2016...

Other commenters have pointed out other inconsistencies in the story.

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

#33

Post by Someone »

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?

Possible answers:

#1) Why wouldn't it be?

#2) as far as we know, it is a lot less empty than it seems to be. We're missing about 85% of the mass in the universe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter), and about 95% of its mass-energy.

So, the best theory we have is, in some sense, awfully inaccurate, at least until we invent some way to see the missing stuff.

Tangentially related: why is the night sky black? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers'_paradox)

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

#34

Post by ptrincr »

Forgive me if this is a daft question, but, how much effort has gone into analysing the contents of this signal?

It appears we have 72 seconds of data to work with, or is it just completely random data with no pattern at all?

If we did receive an intelligent signal from an extraterrestrial source, what form do we think or hope it would take? Perhaps something along the lines of counting out the first 100 prime numbers?

-Edit- so to answer my own question, there is no actual recording of the signal, we only have the intensity of the signal over a period of 72 seconds, represented by 6 characters, each covering a period of 12 seconds.

6EQUJ5

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

#35

Post by SyneRyder »

ChrisGranger wrote: post #28
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.

If LunaSea had mentioned those reasons and some supporting evidence, it would have been a better comment. Two of the points raised by bllckchps I've been able to verify for myself:

* The crowd funding campaign goal has been modified since the article was published. The article said the goal was $13,000, but the goal has now changed to $18,000. [1]

* Some of the content on The Center for Planetary Science website is just a cut and paste from Wikipedia with a few words changed. Compare [2] and [3].

[1] https://www.gofundme.com/wow-experiment

[2] http://planetary-science.org/astrophysics/black-holes/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole

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

#36

Post by grey-area »

hodwik wrote: post #27
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.

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.

It's very easy to be snide, as your last sentence demonstrates; it's much harder, but more valuable, to give thoughtful criticism.

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

#39

Post by michaelcampbell »

alsertia wrote: post #26
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."

Nowhere did he mention "aliens".

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

#40

Post by ChrisGranger »

SyneRyder wrote: post #35
ChrisGranger wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If LunaSea had mentioned those reasons and some supporting evidence, it would have been a better comment. Two of the points raised by bllckchps I've been able to verify for myself: * The crowd funding campaign goal has been modified since the article was published. The article said the goal was $13,000, but the goal has now changed to $18,000. [1] * Some of the content on The Center for Planetary Science website is j…

Someone in the comments at The Guardian said that the initial goal was actually $10,000. That number has been all over the place.

I'm interested in both crowdfunding and astronomy, but this particular campaign seems like one that should be avoided.

Post reply on HN