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Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves, with origins unknown

news.mit.edu

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Re: Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves, with origins unknown

#11

Post by menybuvico »

rootbear wrote: post #10
teraflop wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article suggests it could be a spinning neutron star, which is what a pulsar is. But a pulsar produces an extremely regular sequence of pulses. (Well, actually it emits a continuous beam of radio waves, but its rotation causes the beam to point towards any given observer at regular intervals.) This article describes a source that seems to start and stop at regular intervals of several days (much longer than any k…

I just throw some gasoline on the "It must be Aliens!" theory (to which I do not subscribe!) and point out that heavily compressed data looks random...

As does encrypted data.

Re: Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves, with origins unknown

#12

Post by beamatronic »

menybuvico wrote: post #11
rootbear wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just throw some gasoline on the "It must be Aliens!" theory (to which I do not subscribe!) and point out that heavily compressed data looks random...

As does encrypted data.

That’s why somebody needs to send out a sequence of prime numbers

Re: Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves, with origins unknown

#13

Post by abc_lisper »

perlgeek wrote: post #6

Since it hasn't come up yet: whenever a new astronomical phenomenon is detected, people think "Aliens!" as the reason. In fact, when the first pulsar was discovered, it was (somewhat jokingly) called LGM-1 for "little green men". I'm sure the news hype cycle will come up with similar ideas this time, and I'm just as sure that we'll find a perfectly reasonable explanation not involving intelligent, extraterrestrial li…

Until one day when it becomes true ..

Re: Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves, with origins unknown

#14

Post by elwell »

menybuvico wrote: post #11
rootbear wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just throw some gasoline on the "It must be Aliens!" theory (to which I do not subscribe!) and point out that heavily compressed data looks random...

As does encrypted data.

Compression is just a bad encryption algorithm. Encryption is just a bad compression algorithm.

Re: Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves, with origins unknown

#15

Post by bawana »

If aliens did exist, they would probably compress their communications. And they might use a fault tolerant infrastructure like TCP/IP. In either scenario, real communications would not be periodic but closer to random noise. Has anyone performed a Zipf plot or calculated shannon entropy of non-periodic radio signals?

Re: Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves, with origins unknown

#17

Post by zoomablemind »

abc_lisper wrote: post #13
perlgeek wrote: post #6

Since it hasn't come up yet: whenever a new astronomical phenomenon is detected, people think "Aliens!" as the reason. In fact, when the first pulsar was discovered, it was (somewhat jokingly) called LGM-1 for "little green men". I'm sure the news hype cycle will come up with similar ideas this time, and I'm just as sure that we'll find a perfectly reasonable explanation not involving intelligent, extraterrestrial li…

Until one day when it becomes true ..

We should beam back our commercials at them... they may just change their mind and switch to ads-free alternative.

Re: Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves, with origins unknown

#18

Post by Santosh83 »

bawana wrote: post #15

If aliens did exist, they would probably compress their communications. And they might use a fault tolerant infrastructure like TCP/IP. In either scenario, real communications would not be periodic but closer to random noise. Has anyone performed a Zipf plot or calculated shannon entropy of non-periodic radio signals?

Not if they wanted to specifically send out a beacon to other aliens.

Re: Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves, with origins unknown

#19

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

bawana wrote: post #15

If aliens did exist, they would probably compress their communications. And they might use a fault tolerant infrastructure like TCP/IP. In either scenario, real communications would not be periodic but closer to random noise. Has anyone performed a Zipf plot or calculated shannon entropy of non-periodic radio signals?

What if they use error coding?

My pet theory for a while has been that they use point-to-point communications (lasers), rather than wasteful omnidirectional radio waves, so that you have to get very lucky in order to eavesdrop on them.

Re: Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves, with origins unknown

#20

Post by dylan604 »

Santosh83 wrote: post #18
bawana wrote: post #15

If aliens did exist, they would probably compress their communications. And they might use a fault tolerant infrastructure like TCP/IP. In either scenario, real communications would not be periodic but closer to random noise. Has anyone performed a Zipf plot or calculated shannon entropy of non-periodic radio signals?

Not if they wanted to specifically send out a beacon to other aliens.

Exactly. If you wanted to get someone's attention, you make your signal something that would standout from all of the background noise. If someone send a RCPT signal back, then you could consider sending a more complicated signal.
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