If it's periodic, it's something orbiting something.
If it's powerful enough to be seen 500 million ly away, one of the two orbiting objects is going to be a black hole.
Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves, with origins unknown
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Re: Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves, with origins unknown
#22Probably just some aliens from some advanced civilization Far far away.
And presumably all gone by now
Re: Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves, with origins unknown
#23If 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?
This is a pretty big assumption? Humans use periodic beacons, too.
In this case, I think it is most likely an astronomical object and not an artificial signal. Either way, it's interesting to see how we project ourselves on the extraterrestrial and the assumptions we make on aliens' behalf. There's a great book that came out last year, Extraterrestrial Languages[0] that covers this phenomenon in-depth as well as the "universal" methods some researchers devised in creating languages for transmissions. (it gets very technical! Highly rec'd for PL nerds)
Re: Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves, with origins unknown
#24Since 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…
> Since it hasn't come up yet: whenever a new astronomical phenomenon is detected, people think "Aliens!" as the reason.
Same thing with UFOs, despite the fact that there's been decades of R&D into weaponizing and developing novel UAVs.
Re: Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves, with origins unknown
#25If 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.
Why would an advanced intelligence advertise its location?
It is a high-risk low-reward strategy.
Re: Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves, with origins unknown
#26Shouldn't they be able to discriminate the type of object (single star with orbiting planets that obstruct radio waves, or dual star plus planets where the emitter itself also moves around an orbit) by analyzing the received carrier frequency and see if it's also modulated by a much lower frequency (Doppler effect) compatible with orbital motion?
Re: Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves, with origins unknown
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not if they wanted to specifically send out a beacon to other aliens.
Why would an advanced intelligence advertise its location? It is a high-risk low-reward strategy.
Re: Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves, with origins unknown
#28It seems to me there’s no limit to what we can learn by observing outer space.
Re: Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves, with origins unknown
#29arxiv Jan 28 paper "Periodic activity from a fast radio burst source" [1] via Feb 7 Vice article [2] and Wikipedia "Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME)" page [3].
[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.10275
[2] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxexwz/something-in-deep-...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Hydrogen_Intensity_Ma...
Re: Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves, with origins unknown
#30> For the most part, these detections were one-offs, flashing briefly before disappearing entirely. I realize there is most likely an explanation that doesn’t require intelligent alien life, but that screams Dark Forest Theory.
We should broadcast the coordinates of a distant star to see what happens.