Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a story of a famous observatory that, iirc, kept on seeing really powerful intermittent signals that they couldn't quite hone in on. It seemed everytime they tried to zoom in on the source they couldn't find it again. Signal was quite elusive. They finally traced it to people using the microwave in the break room in a very specific way. Some people liked to open the microwave door before the timer went off. T…
even when my microwave is closed, the interference it generates while running blocks my bluetooth headphones
The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful
271–279 of 279 posts
Re: The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
What papers? Give me something solid to go on here. What is the practical difference? If it's so obvious it should be straightforward to point it out! Edit: let me put it more bluntly. If God had created the universe 6000 years ago and just made it seem older, how could you tell the difference from the creator of a simulation doing exactly the same thing?
Let me be blunt. If you have to ask "What papers?" you're almost certainly talking about what you imagine the simulation hypothesis to be, and not the simulation hypothesis. (I acknowledge that even 'believers' have often not read any papers on it.) Both a google search or a look at the Wikipedia page would get you started. But you can find Bostrom's philosophical argument here: https://simulation-argument.com/simula…
https://simulation-argument.com/faq/#faq-2
The latter is absolutely insane creationist nonsense. Bostrom even says it can be proven by a pop up announcing we are in a simulation, which sounds like exactly the sort of thing you'd maybe expect God to do to prove the truth of the bible.
Wikipedia attributes the simulation hypothesis as having origins as far back as the "Butterfly Dream" of Zhuangzi from ancient China, not Bostrom's paper.
Re: The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
We won't. while we don't know for sure if there is life there is nothing close enough to contact. The closest star is 4 light years, anything within 20 light years has been studied and has no signs of radio or other communication. Anything more than 20 light years is a 40 year message round trip - too far to establish contact in your likely lifetime. (If you are very young maybe 30 light years - but that doesn't add…
HN armchair astronomer question time. What's your favorite answer to the Fermi Paradox? Any crazy far-fetched sci-fi / pseudo-scientific ideas? I'm not really a fan of "Dark Forest". I prefer these: - We're truly rare, maybe even first. Intelligence is extremely hard. LUCA is old, civilization happened yesterday. - Fragile universe. It's easy to destroy universes by accidentally setting off vacuum collapse. This woul…
Our understanding of reality is flawed, and it won't be disseminated because who knows what might happen if people would change dimensions whenever they see fit.
Re: The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
We won't. while we don't know for sure if there is life there is nothing close enough to contact. The closest star is 4 light years, anything within 20 light years has been studied and has no signs of radio or other communication. Anything more than 20 light years is a 40 year message round trip - too far to establish contact in your likely lifetime. (If you are very young maybe 30 light years - but that doesn't add…
HN armchair astronomer question time. What's your favorite answer to the Fermi Paradox? Any crazy far-fetched sci-fi / pseudo-scientific ideas? I'm not really a fan of "Dark Forest". I prefer these: - We're truly rare, maybe even first. Intelligence is extremely hard. LUCA is old, civilization happened yesterday. - Fragile universe. It's easy to destroy universes by accidentally setting off vacuum collapse. This woul…
Re: The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course if there's a pattern like that it would change things. This signal seems to have been a single pulse though
Yep. It's wildly unlikely that this was any kind of deliberate signal. Whatever caused it, it only happened once -- which isn't what you'd expect from aliens hoping to make contact. We only recorded the fact of the signal's existence, without enough resolution to make out any pattern within it. If the aliens were hoping we'd decode it, they were banking on us happening to catch their signal at a very specific instant…
Actually it’s exactly what we did with the Arecibo message, our only attempt to make contact.
Re: The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
One guy I know had one of those UFO pics. When I saw it I knew instantly it was an iridium flare. I knew it because I was dead set on seeing a good one with several apps on my phone to track them. I showed him exactly where he was standing on a map, the time of day, and which satellite it was and when he could see it again by time/date/location. He had none of that. He became totally mad at me. I was kinda sad as I w…
> I was kinda sad as I was just wanted to see one good iridium flare of that magnitude. They are absolutely beautiful! I was lucky enough to once see a meteor (presumably) bounce off the atmosphere. Was the most incredible thing I've ever seen. For an instant (and not any longer) it was almost like day and there was a green ripple that quickly dissipated. Seen nothing like it before or since. The world is full of ama…
I found out that the green was probably nickle content and the sizzling sounds also has an explanation which I don't recall.
What amazed me was that until I understood what I saw was a natural phenomenon, it seemed absolutely mind blowing and still stands out as one of the coolest things I've experienced yet no one I talked to saw it, there was no mention of it on the city subreddit, etc.
This was before the age of everyone having dashcams and doorbell cameras but something that remarkable happening over a densely populated suburban area at around 9pm not even being noticed by a single person I knew or was in contact with on socials suprised me.
Re: The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful
#277Re: The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful
#278I had a theory that it was someone walking across the field with an electronic device, like a flashlight. So I looked up the duration of the signal, size of the field, and average walking pace. It matched perfectly.
There's a story of a famous observatory that, iirc, kept on seeing really powerful intermittent signals that they couldn't quite hone in on. It seemed everytime they tried to zoom in on the source they couldn't find it again. Signal was quite elusive. They finally traced it to people using the microwave in the break room in a very specific way. Some people liked to open the microwave door before the timer went off. T…
Re: The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
2 questions. Are we capable of generating something like that particularly when that happened? and was there ever an attempt to respond in some sort?
It's a pretty easy signal to generate, even back then. I believe they've made efforts to scan the stars in that direction, but given the distance to them it would be decades or centuries until they'd see a response from us.