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Strange messages coming from the stars are ‘probably’ from aliens, scientists say

Kelfuma

Kelfuma

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Strange messages coming from the stars are ?probably? from aliens, scientists say | The Independent

Scientists have heard hugely unusual messages from deep in space that they think are coming from aliens.

A new analysis of strange modulations in a tiny set of stars appears to indicate that it could be coming from extraterrestrial intelligence that is looking to alert us to their existence.

The new study reports the finding of specific modulations in just 234 out of the 2.5 million stars that have been observed during a survey of the sky. The work found that a tiny fraction of them seemed to be behaving strangely.

And there appears to be no obvious explanation for what is going on, leaving the scientists behind the paper to conclude that the messages are coming from aliens.

“We find that the detected signals have exactly the shape of an [extraterrestrial intelligence] signal predicted in the previous publication and are therefore in agreement with this hypothesis,” write EF Borra and E Trottier in a new paper. “The fact that they are only found in a very small fraction of stars within a narrow spectral range centered near the spectral type of the sun is also in agreement with the ETI hypothesis,” the two scientists from Laval University in Quebec write.
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We are on the brink of a new major discovery!!!
 
I always find these discoveries interesting. But they've always turned out to be explainable as something natural.

And we don't do an even decent job of handling our own affairs at the local level, much less being able to cope with such a discovery. I'm torn that we're mentally or emotionally prepared to discover intelligent alien life.

'Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.' -Arthur C. Clarke
 
Kewl.

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Cardinal said:
Kewl.

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Well... If they are hostile, hopefully we'll get lucky, and it'll turn out that all those fuddy-duddy nay-saying scientists are right. Faster than light travel is impossible, so we'll have to wait several thousand years for the invasion to arrive.

Assuming they send an "invasion" at all, that is, and they don't just fire some kind of crazy giant space bullet at us at relativistic velocities, send a self-replicating killer robot swarm, or something else so technologically advanced we haven't even thought of it yet. lol
 
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There's also the possibility that in the time it's taken for their signals to reach Earth, they've already blown themselves up.
 
Gathomas88 said:
Well... If they are hostile, hopefully we'll get lucky, and it'll turn out that all those fuddy-duddy nay-saying scientists are right. Faster than light travel is impossible, so we'll have to wait several thousand years for the invasion to arrive.

Assuming they send an "invasion" at all, that is, and they don't just fire some kind of crazy space bullet at us at relativistic velocities, a self-replicating killer robot swarm, or something else so technologically advanced we haven't even thought of it yet. lol
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There's also the wormhole thing. From what I understand though that requires just a crazy amount of energy to pull off.
 
Brewdog said:
There's also the possibility that in the time it's taken for their signals to reach Earth, they've already blown themselves up.
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I find that theory to be extremely plausible. Not necessarily that they blew themselves up, but the idea that sentient species evolve and exist during such different periods that essentially none of them overlap each other and be spatially close enough to make contact.
 
Cardinal said:
There's also the wormhole thing. From what I understand though that requires just a crazy amount of energy to pull off.
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Yeah. I've really got my fingers crossed for either that, or the Alcubierre "warp drive" NASA was researching, working out.

I doubt we'll find out one way or the other in my life time, however.
 
Gathomas88 said:
Yeah. I've really got my fingers crossed for either that, or the Alcubierre "warp drive" NASA was researching, working out.

I doubt we'll find out one way or the other in my life time, however.
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I had to wiki Alcubierre drive. I'm a little confused how it can say the math supports the theory, but that it would require matter with essentially fictional properties (if I'm reading that right, and it's magnificently possible that I'm not):

"In physics, exotic matter is matter that somehow deviates from normal matter and has "exotic" properties. A more broad definition of exotic matter is any kind of non-baryonic matter—that is not made of baryons, the subatomic particles, such as protons and neutrons, of which ordinary matter is composed.[1] Exotic mass has been considered a colloquial term for matters such as dark matter, negative mass, or imaginary mass. However, exotic mass may exist, because it could support the Schwarzschild black hole theory by being used to stabilize the blackhole/wormhole counterpart."

If I had to live my life over again, I would be a physicist and concentrate exclusively on math to the same extent that I focused this life on art.
 
MaggieD said:
I'm skeptical. You would think, if aliens were trying to communicate with other aliens, it would instantly be recognizable. Wishful thinking's my guess. Fun to think about though.
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Not necessarily. The cosmos subject audio transmissions to all sorts of distortion and degradation. The biggest problem is the distance - the universe is so vast and distances so great that we can't see or hear anything in realtime. We're looking at and listening to the past. In deep space terms that can be millions or even billions of years ago. For all we know, these transmissions originated from systems that were destroyed long ago and we just haven't observed it yet. We also don't know how far radio transmissions can travel and still be intelligible.
 
Actually, we've known for years the uselessness of the science/media nexus. We've learned that articles with weasel words and meaningless phrases are "hugely interesting" and "largely bogus".

Consider:
"Scientists have heard hugely unusual messages from deep in space that they think are coming from aliens."
"Hugely unusual". Wow, that's bigger than unusual, largely unusual, very unusual or a bit unusual. But, what does "hugely unusual" mean?

"A new analysis of strange modulations in a tiny set of stars appears to indicate that it could be coming from extraterrestrial intelligence that is looking to alert us to their existence."
Consider: I wonder what kind of "new analysis"? What makes one modulation common and another strange? What is a "tiny set of stars?" Is that different from a "large set of stars?" Or, a huge set or a minuscule set? Hell, what's a "set of stars". I know a herd of cattle, a pod of whales, a gaggle of geese but a set of stars is new. I wonder what it is.

The new study reports the finding of specific modulations in just 234 out of the 2.5 million stars that have been observed during a survey of the sky. The work found that a tiny fraction of them seemed to be behaving strangely.
Consider: "...behaving strangely." Is this Anthony Weiner strangely or Justin Bieber strangely?

And there appears to be no obvious explanation for what is going on, leaving the scientists behind the paper to conclude that the messages are coming from aliens.
Consider: "appears to be no obvious explanation". So what? Could it be a problem in the appearances or perhaps in the inability to see the less than obvious explanation. But, the scientists were left with no option but to conclude that "the messages are coming from aliens".

Well, sure, golly, what else could it be. "Hey, whose been feeding the Barbra Striesand tape into our reciever?"

“We find that the detected signals have exactly the shape of an [extraterrestrial intelligence] signal predicted in the previous publication and are therefore in agreement with this hypothesis,” write EF Borra and E Trottier in a new paper. “The fact that they are only found in a very small fraction of stars within a narrow spectral range centered near the spectral type of the sun is also in agreement with the ETI hypothesis,” the two scientists from Laval University in Quebec write.
 
Even as reported in that article, those scientists "concluded" nothing.
 
Patrickt said:
Actually, we've known for years the uselessness of the science/media nexus. We've learned that articles with weasel words and meaningless phrases are "hugely interesting" and "largely bogus".

Consider:
"Scientists have heard hugely unusual messages from deep in space that they think are coming from aliens."
"Hugely unusual". Wow, that's bigger than unusual, largely unusual, very unusual or a bit unusual. But, what does "hugely unusual" mean?

"A new analysis of strange modulations in a tiny set of stars appears to indicate that it could be coming from extraterrestrial intelligence that is looking to alert us to their existence."
Consider: I wonder what kind of "new analysis"? What makes one modulation common and another strange? What is a "tiny set of stars?" Is that different from a "large set of stars?" Or, a huge set or a minuscule set? Hell, what's a "set of stars". I know a herd of cattle, a pod of whales, a gaggle of geese but a set of stars is new. I wonder what it is.

The new study reports the finding of specific modulations in just 234 out of the 2.5 million stars that have been observed during a survey of the sky. The work found that a tiny fraction of them seemed to be behaving strangely.
Consider: "...behaving strangely." Is this Anthony Weiner strangely or Justin Bieber strangely?

And there appears to be no obvious explanation for what is going on, leaving the scientists behind the paper to conclude that the messages are coming from aliens.
Consider: "appears to be no obvious explanation". So what? Could it be a problem in the appearances or perhaps in the inability to see the less than obvious explanation. But, the scientists were left with no option but to conclude that "the messages are coming from aliens".

Well, sure, golly, what else could it be. "Hey, whose been feeding the Barbra Striesand tape into our reciever?"

“We find that the detected signals have exactly the shape of an [extraterrestrial intelligence] signal predicted in the previous publication and are therefore in agreement with this hypothesis,” write EF Borra and E Trottier in a new paper. “The fact that they are only found in a very small fraction of stars within a narrow spectral range centered near the spectral type of the sun is also in agreement with the ETI hypothesis,” the two scientists from Laval University in Quebec write.
Click to expand...

images.jpg
 
Gathomas88 said:
Well... If they are hostile, hopefully we'll get lucky, and it'll turn out that all those fuddy-duddy nay-saying scientists are right. Faster than light travel is impossible, so we'll have to wait several thousand years for the invasion to arrive.

Assuming they send an "invasion" at all, that is, and they don't just fire some kind of crazy giant space bullet at us at relativistic velocities, send a self-replicating killer robot swarm, or something else so technologically advanced we haven't even thought of it yet. lol
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They haven't said where these stars are... and I can't figure out if this small collection of stars is grouped physically or if they are logically grouping stars that are in reality separated by thousands of light years.
 
Cardinal said:
I had to wiki Alcubierre drive. I'm a little confused how it can say the math supports the theory, but that it would require matter with essentially fictional properties (if I'm reading that right, and it's magnificently possible that I'm not):

"In physics, exotic matter is matter that somehow deviates from normal matter and has "exotic" properties. A more broad definition of exotic matter is any kind of non-baryonic matter—that is not made of baryons, the subatomic particles, such as protons and neutrons, of which ordinary matter is composed.[1] Exotic mass has been considered a colloquial term for matters such as dark matter, negative mass, or imaginary mass. However, exotic mass may exist, because it could support the Schwarzschild black hole theory by being used to stabilize the blackhole/wormhole counterpart."

If I had to live my life over again, I would be a physicist and concentrate exclusively on math to the same extent that I focused this life on art.
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This is an extremely simplistic way that a physicist friend of mine explained to me over shabbos dinner one evening:

Imagine you have an equation, but the only way you can balance it is to use a number/value that doesn't exist. Let's call it eleventy. We cant prove that eleventy exists, though some have hypothesized how eleventy could be created. If you were able to find eleventy and plug it into your equation then it would balance. But absent this fictional number nothing else will make it work. Now replace eleventy with 'exotic matter' and you have your answer as to how you can create theoretical devices, like the Alcubierre drive, that operate using unproved or non-existent properties.

Again this is a super simplistic explanation but I believe it puts the gist across.
 
Sherman123 said:
Imagine you have an equation, but the only way you can balance it is to use a number/value that doesn't exist. Let's call it eleventy. We cant prove that eleventy exists
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110

What do I win?
 
Kreton said:
I am glad that the research funds are not all going to male pattern baldness and ED.

Seriously though this is pretty exciting news. I hope they continue to track this. It may take a few years to completely validate it but it will come.
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and then we would face the dilemma whether to reach out
or not
 
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