First alien signal may have been detected...!

[Robert]

It sounds like SETI wants more people to install their 'screensave' on their desktop, so they launched this news item.

[Ted Striker]

I'd hit it.

[Urban Ranger]

It is definitely very exciting news.

[DRoseDARs]

Straight from the horse's mouth:
Reports of SETI@home Extraterrestrial Signal Highly Exaggerated

September 2, 2004:

A rash of reports in recent days that SETI@home has discovered a likely signal from an alien civilization are highly exaggerated, says SETI@home Chief Scientist Dan Werthimer of U.C. Berkeley.

The storm was initiated by an article in New Scientist magazine, which reported about SETI@home’s most promising candidate signal to date, and speculated about its possible origins. Like all of SETI@home’s 5 billion potential signals, this candidate, labeled SHGb02+14a, was assigned a numerical score representing the statistical likelihood that it is indeed an intelligent extraterrestrial signal. Its relatively high score placed it among the 200 “top candidates” selected for the targeted reobservation sessions that took place in March of 2003 at the Arecibo Radio Observaotry. Of all the candidates targeted in the sessions, however, SHGb02+14a was one of the very few to be confirmed during the reobservations, and the only one whose score following the sessions actually went up.

...Image w/caption posted below...

While this makes SHGb02+14a interesting, the chances that it actually represents an intelligent signal from beyond remain extremely slim. Random chance alone would make it probable that at least one of the billions of candidates detected by SETI@home would be observed on three separate occasions, as was the case for this candidate. Furthermore, as we reported in the SETI@home Update of May 17, 2004, the fact that this candidate’s frequency drifts rapidly makes it extremely improbable that it is a transmission from extraterrestrials. Because of the drift, explained Werthimer, “if we had looked at the sky even a few seconds later we wouldn’t have found a match” for this candidate. A signal that drifts so quickly that it can only be heard for seconds at a time at a given frequency can only be detected by blind luck. Needless to say, such a transmission is an unlikely vehicle for message from an advanced civilization.

In addition, SETI@home Project Director David Anderson of U.C. Berkeley pointed out that SHGb02+14a is a candidate of a type known as a "barycentrically corrected gaussian." A true transmission of this type, he explained, would remain in a more or less fixed narrow-band frequency, and not drift rapidly as this signal does.

At Arecibo the giant radio telescope still scans the sky, looking for an alien transmission. Around the world, millions are still crunching SETI@home data on their personal computers. The Search for extraterrestrial intelligence continues at full speed, but as of now there is no breakthrough.

Of course, this could change at any time… We promise to keep you posted.

Caption:

A sky map of the reobservations that took place at Arecibo in March of 2003. The blue areas represent the plane of the Milky Way, the gray strip the band of sky seen from Arecibo. The squares mark the locations of the signal candidates revisited during the reobservation sessions.
Image: University of California/SETI@home

[Starchild]

This seems to be the second time the New Scientist has jumped on a story before it was fully ready. They got blindswiped by a "nannybot" that was supposed to be able to pick out paedophiles and boot them off chat rooms. Turned out to be the programmer hand typing in all the responses.

[Space05us]

maybe the signal is us!?

[problem_child]

Originally posted by Asher

Modern computers expend much more energy while under load than idle, and a computer with SETI is never idle.

That's not my point though, my point was opportunity cost. If you want to run a computational program as a screensaver, consider something genuinely useful to mankind like Folding@Home (protein folding for cancer research).

As far as I'm concerned, people should conserve energy (allow their computers to "sleep"), or they should use the spare cycles constructively with programs like Folding@Home. SETI@home is a waste of resources because it uses additional electricity as the computer never sleeps, and it doesn't do anything useful.

This seems a fairly intelligent analysis to me.

I absolutely believe there is other life in the universe, we would be impossibly freakish if not. Perhaps of every 40 billion planets only one has 'plant-like life', perhaps of every 80 billion worlds bearing plant-like life, only one has 'basic animal-life', perhaps of every 160 billion planets bearing basic animal-life only one has advanced animal life, and of every 320 billion of those, only one has intelligent life, and of every 640 billion of those, only one has technologically advanced life, and of every 1280 billion of them... only one planet is populated by beings that have the slightest interest in space exploration, and has developed radio technology, and has the economy to support space-mission one, and the luck not to have succumbed to some sort of planet-voiding war/apocalypse/crash-back... let alone to have managed to put out enough deep space missions to eventually stumble across us.

In short, I very much doubt we'll ever meet or hear from other intelligent beings in the universe, though I'm sure they exist. We might one day get to meet a Titanian germ or something though... that'll be really exciting!!!!

[Robert]

Read the book 'rare earth' by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee to find out that the odds for inteligent life are way to heigh, and that life on earth in fact is rare and most obviously not available anywhere else in the universe.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0387952896/qid=1094210136/sr=ka-1/ref=pd_ka_1/103-1246258-7731844

[Natalinasmpf]

Perhaps alternating frequencies are needed for the viable transmissions?

You know, like aliens discover warp technology for signal transmissions and this involves manipulatin frequencies, photons, positrons and quantum mechanics?

Or maybe they also expect a "decoder" on the receiving side (hence the alternating frequency)...perhaps we came across a scrambled message from an inter-galactic war!



"Oh its just cosmic background radiation...or a weird space anomaly..."

Thats what they want the ENEMY to think.

[problem_child]

Originally posted by CyberShy
Read the book 'rare earth' by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee to find out that the odds for inteligent life are way to heigh, and that life on earth in fact is rare and most obviously not available anywhere else in the universe.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...246258-7731844

Absolute Self-Centred Certainties like that about nature always crack me up. Kinda like those books on Phrenology from the 18th Centuary, or those old films from the 50s about what life will be like in the year 2000, or the Catholic Church's position in the 16th Centuary.

All we know is that we Know Nothing, but how big is Nothing?

[DaShi]

Not very big, it is nothing afterall.

[MikeH]

Originally posted by Asher

Modern computers expend much more energy while under load than idle, and a computer with SETI is never idle.

That's not my point though, my point was opportunity cost. If you want to run a computational program as a screensaver, consider something genuinely useful to mankind like Folding@Home (protein folding for cancer research).

As far as I'm concerned, people should conserve energy (allow their computers to "sleep"), or they should use the spare cycles constructively with programs like Folding@Home. SETI@home is a waste of resources because it uses additional electricity as the computer never sleeps, and it doesn't do anything useful.

Totally agree.

[problem_child]

Originally posted by DaShi
Not very big, it is nothing afterall.

So there's a tiny bit of nothing surrounded by an endless solid quantity of something?

[DaShi]

Space is something. Nothing is the complete absence of something. If you wanted to quantify nothing, you could use this equation:

(G*pi/(R^(12+(c/D))))*0,

where G is the graviational constant, pi is pi, R is the gas constant, c is the speed of light, and D is the dielectric constant of the medium your are measuring nothing.

[alva]

Originally posted by Starchild
This seems to be the second time the New Scientist has jumped on a story before it was fully ready. They got blindswiped by a "nannybot" that was supposed to be able to pick out paedophiles and boot them off chat rooms. Turned out to be the programmer hand typing in all the responses.

Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

Boss" any more bugs in the program then"
Programmer " nope nono....works pejfectly....except..."
Boss"Yeah?"
Programmer"It does seem to want to shut down every night for about 8 hours, no idea as to why though. hehe, ehum."