This is the signal from 1977 they are talking about:
http://www.bigear.org/wow20th.htm
Amateur astronomer Alberto Caballero finds possible source of Wow signal
41–50 of 52 posts
Re: Amateur astronomer Alberto Caballero finds possible source of Wow signal
#42I read the paper (1) and it's kind of pointless. There's no actual evidence of anything in this paper. It consists of a database search of stars in the WOW signal direction, finding one that is sort of like the Sun. It is unknown if this star even has any exoplanets. Many comments think there is an exoplanet, so let me emphasize that all that is known to exist is a star. (1) https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.06090.pdf
Is this information not helpful? I am completely disgusted by the HN tone of "it's pointless to look at this because there are potential flaws"
The paper isn't pointless, but it is highly speculative given its assumptions. Makes it feel less like a scientific paper advancing knowledge and more like a tech blog post to me.
Re: Amateur astronomer Alberto Caballero finds possible source of Wow signal
#43I read the paper (1) and it's kind of pointless. There's no actual evidence of anything in this paper. It consists of a database search of stars in the WOW signal direction, finding one that is sort of like the Sun. It is unknown if this star even has any exoplanets. Many comments think there is an exoplanet, so let me emphasize that all that is known to exist is a star. (1) https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.06090.pdf
Is this information not helpful? I am completely disgusted by the HN tone of "it's pointless to look at this because there are potential flaws"
The information isn't helpful. If the paper wanted to make a case for this star being a candidate for the signal's origin, the paper should have at least discussed the expected probability of finding such a start in such a volume in the Milky Way.
They found 1. Or 14. Or a lot more, if you relax a constraint that isn't motivated. The "paper" concludes that both candidate volumes() of space should be searched for exoplanets.
() only one "horn" (of 2) received the signal, but they don't know which one. Hence two possible volumes of space where the signal could have originated.
Re: Amateur astronomer Alberto Caballero finds possible source of Wow signal
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "paper" is here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.06090 but its analysis is not really something that you'd get published in an astronomy journal [speaking as a former professional astronomer]
Sorry to pry, but what does one do after a professional astronomy career?
Trick Soviet hackers into thinking your government lab is doing research on space based weapons.
Re: Amateur astronomer Alberto Caballero finds possible source of Wow signal
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this information not helpful? I am completely disgusted by the HN tone of "it's pointless to look at this because there are potential flaws"
The paper isn't pointless, but it is highly speculative given its assumptions. Makes it feel less like a scientific paper advancing knowledge and more like a tech blog post to me.
I agree it is highly speculative, but anyone who is interested in the topic could make a name for themselves by respectfully qualifying/disproving this theory with a statistical analysis of the probability of this signal coming from the exoplanets in that area, and profiling what a qualifying candidate exoplanet would look like.
Or alternatively just provide the statistics on what the chance is that the signal was errant/natural in cause
Re: Amateur astronomer Alberto Caballero finds possible source of Wow signal
#46sort of on the same subject, lots of discussion has happened over the year of the few times we've intentionally transmitted signals into space, such as:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message
one thing people don't often think about... We have thousands of sites all around the world that transmit stuff to geostationary satellites all the time. Some of them are quite large and powerful (up to 1200W and 2000W power amplifiers on 11 meter size C-band dishes). When those signals are sent to a geostationary satellite, it's not like the signal stops at the satellite.
If a big earth station dish is aimed at a specific spot in geostationary and tranmits something, 99.999999% of that signal is going past the satellite and off into interstellar space, possibly to eventually be intercepted by aliens.
Re: Amateur astronomer Alberto Caballero finds possible source of Wow signal
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "paper" is here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.06090 but its analysis is not really something that you'd get published in an astronomy journal [speaking as a former professional astronomer]
Sorry to pry, but what does one do after a professional astronomy career?
I did a lot of data processing, and about 1/4 of the year was grant proposals.
Re: Amateur astronomer Alberto Caballero finds possible source of Wow signal
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
>In his[Alberto Caballero] paper uploaded to the arXiv preprint server That looks like a citation to me. This isn't a defense of the article, which is bad for a variety of reasons. I'm just saying let's stick to what's true, rather than pretending they didn't cite a source just because they didn't have a hyperlink.
The "paper" is here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.06090 but its analysis is not really something that you'd get published in an astronomy journal [speaking as a former professional astronomer]
Very much agree, this is a fishing expedition where you can come to pretty much any conclusion.
1. the regions of sky that the signal might have come from are huge, and contain tons of stars. 2. he's basically just sifting through all the stars in a huge area of space and looking for ones with Sol like parameters.
That's not science, but that said, it doesn't mean we shouldn't have a look and listen at the star if it really is a great candidate.
When Kepler started returning data, so much of it was unexpected that at the very least now we have a star name that if future scientists are looking to compare their data set with other findings, they may see "oh this 2mass star was hypothesized to be the wow signal by a crank, but we just found X there!"
It's tricky of course, because it's hard for a normal person (I am assuming) to tell the difference between some dude who uploads a neat thing to arXiv and someone who stakes their career and livelihood on the science they produce.
Re: Amateur astronomer Alberto Caballero finds possible source of Wow signal
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry to pry, but what does one do after a professional astronomy career?
Trick Soviet hackers into thinking your government lab is doing research on space based weapons.
From the labs I've worked in, I think the Russians would already know you weren't given the security of a lot of researchers' systems, maybe not national labs/NASA, but I even did some work at Goddard Space Flight Center and it was an ancient lab that definitely had live internet Ethernet wires here and there that systems were plugged into doing... stuff.
Re: Amateur astronomer Alberto Caballero finds possible source of Wow signal
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "paper" is here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.06090 but its analysis is not really something that you'd get published in an astronomy journal [speaking as a former professional astronomer]
Sorry to pry, but what does one do after a professional astronomy career?
All (two) of the astronomers I know became fat, lazy, well paid engineers with a wife, house and garden, picket fence, doing programming and engineering at a multinational company. Sigh, I had such high hopes.