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SETI Finds Interesting Signal

Several readers sent in notes about an interesting signal discovered by SETI. No real evidence of Someone Out There, but not fully explainable either. Another reader submits a blurb suggesting that aliens should send spacemail, not signals: "Rutgers electrical engineering professor, Christopher Rose, has an article on Nature magazine's cover today describing the most efficient way for our civilization to be discovered by aliens. On this question of better to 'write or radiate', his conclusions: better not to send radio transmission, when physical media like DNA on an asteroid can declare a terrestrial presence. Similar to what motivated Voyager scientists to attach a plaque for the outbound trip. Rose has some great information payload sizes as examples (like the entire information equivalent for our global genome fitting on a 100 pound laptop!)."

6 of 816 comments (clear)

  1. Re:And here comes another signal... by StarsEnd · · Score: 5, Informative
  2. Mysterious signals from 1000 light years away by another+misanthrope · · Score: 5, Informative

    I sent in this article - very cool read and makes me wish for FTL travel!

    New Scientist is reporting that the signal "also happens to be the best candidate yet for a contact by intelligent aliens in the nearly six-year history of the SETI@home project, which uses programs running as screensavers on millions of personal computers worldwide to sift through signals picked up by the Arecibo telescope...*snip*

    ...There are other oddities. For instance, the signal's frequency is drifting by between eight to 37 hertz per second. "The signal is moving rapidly in frequency and you would expect that to happen if you are looking at a transmitter on a planet that's rotating very rapidly and where the civilisation is not correcting the transmission for the motion of the planet," Korpela says.

  3. Coral Cache Ineffective by DrunkenTerror · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here is an article that is un-slashdotted as of 0057 Universal Time.

  4. Re:Waste of time by NonSequor · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sorry, but Vulcan women, and in fact Vulcans in general, aren't logical, they're just stoic. If they were really logical, they'd realize that logic can only be applied in situations where one has reliable axioms, which excludes the vast majority of all common situations (I say this as a math major). Furthermore, I'd wager that in cases where one doesn't have enough information to make a "logical" decision, it's usually much wiser to follow one's emotions.

    Since the Vulcans are too dumb to figure this stuff out and follow a philosophy we abandoned that hit its peak and quickly declined about two thousand years ago, I'd say that they are too dumb to have actually created warp technology on their own and they must have just stolen the technology from another civilization.

    --
    My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
  5. Re:Anyone got a torrent? by smclean · · Score: 5, Informative

    Someone else posted this: Signal Candidate SHGb02+14a

    --

    "'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."

  6. Don't be scared by DrunkenTerror · · Score: 5, Informative

    I know scotsman.com looks fishy, but it's not a troll link, folks. It's news.scotsman.com, Scotland's national newspaper online. It's not a troll. I'll bet my karma on it. :)