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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

#51

Post by Absentinsomniac »

samstave wrote: post #44
maze-le wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/(Mpc s) - wich is an incredibly small number, scaled down to a meter it is ~10^-23 m / (m s).…

ELI5 If space is just empty nothing vacuum - how does it expand?

Space isn't an empty vacuum, but that's tangential. The expansion in this context is metric explanation, which just means things are getting further and further apart between two points due to space "expanding" between non-gravitationally bound objects. The explanation for "why" is sort of "we don't know". AFAIK, the leading theory is a combination of momentum / inertia from the big bang and acceleration from dark energy. Which we also don't know a lot about.

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

#52

Post by mrfusion »

ptrincr wrote: post #34

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 number…

Why is that? We just didn't record it?

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

#53

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

acqq wrote: post #46
TrainedMonkey wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

From the comments on the Guardian site, user bllckchps estimates the needed amount of stuff in the comet to produce the signal: "Of course, most of the mass is in the nucleus, and will be in molecular form, unobservable at 1.4GHz. Let's be generous, and allow the comet to be made purely of water ice (H20) which will dissociate into a neutral hydrogen (H) and a hydroxyl (OH) as it goes into the halo, meaning that ~1/1…

Kickstarter once again fails to find intelligent life on Earth.

Apparently there was a "Habitable Planets Field Trip" in 2015.

Sorry to have missed that.

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

#54

Post by maaku »

mrfusion wrote: post #52
ptrincr wrote: post #34

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 number…

Why is that? We just didn't record it?

1977

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

#55

Post by InclinedPlane »

mrfusion wrote: post #52
ptrincr wrote: post #34

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 number…

Why is that? We just didn't record it?

1977. The intensity data was the recording according to the standard of the times.

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

#56

Post by iagooar »

acqq wrote: post #46
TrainedMonkey wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

From the comments on the Guardian site, user bllckchps estimates the needed amount of stuff in the comet to produce the signal: "Of course, most of the mass is in the nucleus, and will be in molecular form, unobservable at 1.4GHz. Let's be generous, and allow the comet to be made purely of water ice (H20) which will dissociate into a neutral hydrogen (H) and a hydroxyl (OH) as it goes into the halo, meaning that ~1/1…

Sorry to formulate it like this, but his LinkedIn profile picture looks like one of a real douchebag.

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

#57

Post by iaw »

mrfusion wrote: post #52
ptrincr wrote: post #34

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 number…

Why is that? We just didn't record it?

In 1977 I suspect recording equipment was too expensive for radio telescope work when an alphanumeric graph can suffice.

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

#58

Post by maaku »

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.

Read the comments of the article. It does appear to be a scam.

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

#59

Post by maaku »

throweway wrote: post #47
michaelcampbell wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowhere did he mention "aliens".

I think E.T. refers to alien. If he means from outside of Earth generally ... well that is tautological. So I assume he means aliens.

Extra terrestrial is a astronomical term of art that means "not of Earth." E.g. not a satellite. His usage was correct, your interpretation was not.

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

#60

Post by ANH »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #55
mrfusion wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that? We just didn't record it?

1977. The intensity data was the recording according to the standard of the times.

Having read about historical radio astronomy and practiced signals analysis, I think they were a little more sophisticated than that. The recording in this format was made for easy perusal by a human, say, the next morning. I think that was the case with this signal. No doubt they wanted to revisit that spot in the sky looking at intensity, frequency shifting (Doppler), bandwidth, modulation, etc. But they never saw it again.

Historical point of interest: the Big Ear telescope that recorded this was bulldozed to make way for a golf course.

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