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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

#61

Post by tptacek »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #49
Falcon9 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, dang. It was once true that a surefire way to rack up a large amount of karma in HN was to make a nasty, uncharitable statement like that. I've experienced the weird ridiculous thrill of it myself, on another account, along with the deflating realization that I'm being rewarded (such as it is, karma having no actual value) for participating in the destruction of civilized discourse. I appreciate you actively…

>karma having no actual value I believe additional HN abilities are granted based on an account's karma number.

Not really, no. The site karma thresholds are extremely low. They're an anti-abuse measure, not a reward.

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

#62

Post by throweway »

scrollaway wrote: post #50
throweway wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is it tautological? Signals like that can be terrestrial in nature. In fact, recent story: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-05/05/microwave-par...

Yeah but i dont think he was saying no comet implies no microwave oven. Oh i dont know what the ancestor meant maybe we should ask him or her or it.

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

#63

Post by acqq »

ANH wrote: post #60
InclinedPlane wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's still a "memorial" web site:

http://www.bigear.org/about.htm

The Big Ear telescope "was larger than three football fields in size and equivalent in sensitivity to a circular dish 52.5 meters (175 feet) in diameter. The telescope consisted of a flat tiltable reflector measuring 340 feet long by 100 feet high (less when tilted), a fixed standing paraboloidal (curved) reflector which measured 360 feet long by 70 feet high, an aluminum-covered ground plane measuring 360 feet wide by 500 feet long, and two feed horns mounted on a movable assembly."

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

#66

Post by jsprogrammer »

tptacek wrote: post #61
jsprogrammer wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>karma having no actual value I believe additional HN abilities are granted based on an account's karma number.

Not really, no. The site karma thresholds are extremely low. They're an anti-abuse measure, not a reward.

You can label and the differences between extremely low karma accounts and 0 karma accounts however you'd like, but a low karma account has more power over the content of the site than a zero karma account.

I also don't think it can be easily ruled out that there are additional, higher karma thresholds upon which an account may be bestowed with additional powers (rate-limit loosening, for example).

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

#67

Post by mcbutterbunz »

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…

> If we did receive an intelligent signal from an extraterrestrial source, what form do we think or hope it would take?

For unintentional signals, I think it would take the same form of the early radio broadcasts from here on earth. These are likely some of the weakest signals but they have also traveled further than any other at this point.

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

#68

Post by iamdave »

fapjacks wrote: post #37
interfixus wrote: post #12

August the 15th, 1977, signal received. Next day, Elvis dies. That's just too good of a nutcase story not to be in circulation.

s/dies/called back to his planet/

...was that a Men in Black reference?

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

#69

Post by nonbel »

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…

The level of likeliness/probability for a given explanation depends crucially upon the level of likeliness/probability for all other explanations. This is the fatal flaw of research using p-values to assess evidence for a given theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem

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

#70

Post by dang »

maaku wrote: post #58
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.

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

Even if so, the snark makes it harder to tell that this was the point.
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