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SETI Has Observed a 'Strong' Signal That May Originate From a Sun-like Star (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The RATAN-600 radio telescope in Zelenchukskaya, Russia has detected a strong signal around 11 GHz (which is very unlikely to be naturally-caused) coming from HD164595, a star nearly identical in mass to the Sun and located about 95 light years from Earth. The system is known to have at least one planet. If the signal were isotropic, it would seem to indicate a Kardashev Type II civilization. While it is too early to draw any conclusions, the discovery will be discussed at an upcoming SETI committee meeting on September 27th. According to Paul Gilster, author of the Centauri Dreams website, "No one is claiming that this is the work of an extraterrestrial civilization, but it is certainly worth further study. Working out the strength of the signal, the researchers say that if it came from an isotropic beacon, it would be of a power possible only for a Kardashev Type II civilization. If it were a narrow beam signal focused on our Solar System, it would be of a power available to a Kardashev Type I civilization. The possibility of noise of one form or another cannot be ruled out, and researchers in Paris led by Jean Schneider are considering the possible microlensing of a background source by HD164595. But the signal is provocative enough that the RATAN-600 researchers are calling for permanent monitoring of this target."
But it's aliens.
Is used for microwave communication, so it could be that. A bounced signal or something.
I usually don't post anything here, but...It seems like not all are that impressed.
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=80193#1813506
and they are going to keep not claiming very loudly and repeatedly.
Please no, we can't take a Kardashian civilization!
Except possibly in the widest sense of "SETI has observed someone else observing"... A Russian radio-telescope site claims it has observed the alleged signal well over a year ago - which should give you an idea how important this observation is. The headline, copied straight from ARS Technica though, isn't just ordinarily imprecise, but anyone who's on social media is already aware of the original observation, and is now eagerly waiting for independent confirmation. Without that, it can be anything from an attempt grabbing funding to a Russian radio-frequency jammer test. Because of that, an idependent SETI observation would be very significant. Unfortunately, it's likely a rare event since they've not managed to spot it again in over a year.
welcome our new Kardashev Type II overlords
I fired up xephem and determined this to be in the constellation hercules, not far from vega, is this right? Since vega is a star that appears in the summer in the northern hemisphere this would make visual observation possible.
But perhaps my coordinates are all wrong?
This has been played out in the media in a way that a "high" Kardashev (no relation to the Kardashians I believe) is exciting, in that it points to a very advanced civilization. In reality it is the opposite, a signal requiring a civilization to have fully harnessed a star means that it is less likely to be an actual ET signal.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Aliens that are advanced enough to signal us with that kind of power aren't going to find us advanced enough to be worth talking to if they can even understand our primitive methods of communication at all. If there's anything we have that they want, they'll just come take it, much like we don't ask permission before clearcutting forests inhabited by animals. Even if they just want to study us, our scientists don't send a beacon to an ant colony before they come and fill the ant colony with molten aluminum to take a casting -- so there's no reason to think that advanced aliens would do so either, they'll just come and do their studies and if they happen to kill humanity with their research techniques, that's just a necessary part of research, no big loss.
You mean that no further news are because of NSA?
> 11 GHz (which is very unlikely to be naturally-caused)
Aside from fucking military radio signals...
Didn't Al divorce Title?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Just for your amusement, non-Slavic speakers:
Zelenchukskaya means "of vegetables".
What I was thinking, in the off chance that this is an advanced alien civ, like 10000 years more advanced than us or more, then that indirectly would confirm that despite our SF stories, faster than light travel may indeed be impossible if such an advanced civ wasn't able to crack it - otherwise they would have simply visited.
Getting past all the jokes, and all of the "it's a year-old signal" and all that. Let's assume that it is advanced life - at least as advanced as today's slashdot crowd. What now? Do we start sending signals to it and waiting 190 years to see if something comes back? Does this prove that maybe the best approach to finding advanced life out there, is to simply assume that it's there, praise the universe for it, and carry on with improving life here? Because if that signal is some advanced civilization, it means nothing practical beyond, "Hey look, life in other parts of the universe! Wow!"
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Place head between legs
Kiss arse good-bye
It has been some time since Hawking has been able to do that.
An advanced civilization capable of sending such a beacon would have the ability to modulate the signal..That leaves a couple of possibilities, Natural phenomenon, or remnants of a dead civilization triggering some signal.
...they announce that the signal has a blue shift component.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I read recently that SETI had decoded the message. While they're not sure of the meaning, it stated, "All your base are belong to us"
It finally happened, today, here, on my immortal beloved Slashdot.
The day has finally arrived. No, not the Singularity, even.
We have even named it. So, all we have to do is wait for the inevitable--when the headlines blurt out the ominous things we have watched only on films like Independence Day
The Kardashians are coming!!
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Let's put the aliens on a watch-list. Because humans putting humans on watch-lists isn't nearly invasive enough.
Better yet, put them on the no fly list!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
And today it's called "Capitalism".
https://seti.berkeley.edu/HD16...
"It's not intelligent life, just the military."
Table-ized A.I.
He typed that in on a phone or computer that has had trillions of capitalist dollars dumped into improvements in over the past few decades.
I hate capitalism, I mean daddy! He is so embarrassing when he talks to the cashier at the checkout at the supermarket! Gosh!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Wanting to get paid for your labor isn't capitalism. Wanting to get paid just for already owning something is.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
What? No flies? You would take their only form of nutrition from them?
IT'S WAR
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
They have laws against estigation, in or out. Watch yourself, primitive bag-of-mostly-water.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If Earth launched a satellite precisely enough at the direction of the HD164595, and sufficient time elapsed for the distance to make earth's solar orbit fall in the range of the satellite's broadcast, and the satellite was sending communications back towards earth in its trail, could we not prank some future generation by not recording the launch? And how exactly do we know that wasn't done to us? Soviet Russia would have valued being the only ones to know that a signal wasn't coming from aliens, for example. Or some USA billionaire could have planned it, or rogue NASA could have calculated its eventual transmission would increase NASA funding...
If we translate the signal and it says that a Kardasian Prince needs us to transfer money in order to release millions of dollars from his account, it's a bad sign.
Gently reply
Oh, don't forget the big voter registration drive in their cemeteries.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
WOW!
Someone had to do it.
rats
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
Sorry, which country is true capitalism? All i see around here are state sponsored monopolies, global corporations who make their own rules, the military industrial complex and lobbyists.
If you live in the west, and probably everywhere else, you live in corporatism, not capitalism.
The grand parent was saying that the current corporate culture of profit driven "capitalism" is akin to slavery with its destruction of the individual, and the race to the bottom. Maybe slavery got us computers and all that, but it also built the pyramids. The ends don't necessarily justify the means, and certainly aren't the only way to go about doing things. I fail to see your point. That computers wouldn't have been invented if not for monopolies? If you know the history of technology that is not what happened. In fact its the reverse. Small companies like microsoft defeating huge behemoths like IBM. (Which then of course became just as ruthless as the companies they successfully usurped, starting the cycle all over again)
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
"I want to believe." -- X-Files
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
Also, we must make the extrajudicial no-fly list also take away your constitutional right to own firearms, we can't have the suspected terrorists arming themselves, it will be anarchy!
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Everyone I know is using their fancy 1W+ to tap out morse code and binary versions of the voyager plaque at this part of the sky. Mfers going to think a disco hit them in 95 years!
No, willing to get paid so little for it is.
Difference between capitalism and communism: in capitalism, is man against man. Communism is just opposite.
Ranking civilizations by their ability to use the energy of the stars?
What about anti-matter? What about exotic sources of energy that aren't understood very well yet (like dark matter or black holes or time space)?
And how is it that the VOLUME of energy usage relates to the level of civilization? That's like saying whales have larger brains so they have better lives than humans or are on a higher level or whatever.
And you know what? What if the people there are stuck in 1970's technology but are happy in a way that is entirely impossible to empirically measure?
You have to really be living in your parent's basement to care about things like this. Another example is the consortium of nuclear alarmist scientists or whatever.
Objectivity and value.
Zero intersection.