Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves, with origins unknown

news.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 186 posts

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

#71

Post by egfx »

dogma1138 wrote: post #48
Jestar342 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the earliest radio broadcasts are Hitler's speeches, as well as other world leaders preparing their nations for global conflict. So there's that.

That would be TV broadcasts as I’m guessing everyone here seen Contact. Ironically in 1948 when FM was standardized and countries were assigned spectrums Germany wasn’t really invited as it wasn’t a state for that short period and wasn’t assigned a spectrum so they started broadcasting in VHF because that wasn’t covered by the Copenhagen Agreement. A few years later people realized that VHF was supper efficient for F…

> I’m guessing everyone here seen Contact.

More than once

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

#72

Post by 0-_-0 »

lumost wrote: post #46
beamatronic wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What protocol do you use to represent the sequence? Bytes, Morse, Amplitude modulation, frequency modulation? All of these combinations may appear random to one without the right codec.

1 is 1 blip, 2 is 2 blips, etc. just like in the movie

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unary_numeral_system

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

#74

Post by plutonorm »

jrichardshaw wrote: post #59
magicMonkeyPaw wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you looking forward to reading all the crazy people's takes on why it's actually aliens that you found?

Always! I think astronomers often make it worse. I mean, we like thinking about why things are actually aliens as much as anyone else (LGM1 was already mentioned), and while we mostly try to restrain ourselves, every now and again a famous astronomer breaks and lets out a paper about it.

That's great to hear! If some credible evidence of aliens did appear, where do you think it would come from? Tabby's Star like data? atmospheric spectra? FRB's? other? Would absolutely love to hear your thoughts :)

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

#75

Post by hnarn »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #39
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…

There was a time when people thought a ball of fire moving across the sky every day must be alive. The universe is full of strange phenomena perfectly explainable by physics. This is no different.

Are you saying that extraterrestrial intelligence is not “a strange phenomena perfectly explainable by physics”?

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

#76

Post by antepodius »

plutonorm wrote: post #74
jrichardshaw wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always! I think astronomers often make it worse. I mean, we like thinking about why things are actually aliens as much as anyone else (LGM1 was already mentioned), and while we mostly try to restrain ourselves, every now and again a famous astronomer breaks and lets out a paper about it.

That's great to hear! If some credible evidence of aliens did appear, where do you think it would come from? Tabby's Star like data? atmospheric spectra? FRB's? other? Would absolutely love to hear your thoughts :)

My guess is a nanotech slug impacting earth and turning us into grey goo/a matrioshka brain factory.

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

#77

Post by hnarn »

swiley wrote: post #42
EamonnMR wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should broadcast the coordinates of a distant star to see what happens.

Which space do you build the coordinates from? How will you encode them?

1) The one relative to the receiver of the coordinates

2) You start by explaining the encoding first, before sending coordinates, maybe by establishing X and Y axes as well as compass direction based on “landmarks” that should be visible from the receiver.

That’s the first thing that came to my mind at least.

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

#78

Post by antepodius »

hnarn wrote: post #75
dreamcompiler wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a time when people thought a ball of fire moving across the sky every day must be alive. The universe is full of strange phenomena perfectly explainable by physics. This is no different.

Are you saying that extraterrestrial intelligence is not “a strange phenomena perfectly explainable by physics”?

The map is not the territory; the way people stumble through their maps has little to do with the territory.

People's intuitive maps don't tend to distinguish greatly between the plausibility of sapient suns and the plausibility of sapient aliens.

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

#79

Post by tlow »

antepodius wrote: post #76
plutonorm wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great to hear! If some credible evidence of aliens did appear, where do you think it would come from? Tabby's Star like data? atmospheric spectra? FRB's? other? Would absolutely love to hear your thoughts :)

My guess is a nanotech slug impacting earth and turning us into grey goo/a matrioshka brain factory.

Can you say more about these nanotech slugs please?
Post reply on HN