Wow! Signal: Origin of possible alien signal narrowed down - study (msn.com) If this guy is right that is terribly exciting because the signal fits the model for an artificial signal not natural in origin. It has always been tacitly assumed that it was something on earth and not from another planet. But this suggests it was from another solar system. That means the chance of it being an alien signal is significant.
I'm not convinced this is as significant as it is being spun up to be. It doesn't seem to be the case of them identifying a likely source. They worked on the assumption that the signal came from a Sol-like star and then looked for such a star in the (large) region covered by the telescope when the signal was received. They found several possible candidates but highlighted the most Sol-like one. There is nothing about that star that makes it any more likely to be the source of the signal in and of itself. The main bit of information I feel is missing is how common such stars are. If other similarly sized areas of space were examined, how many Sol-like stars would be found?
'What makes it significant is that the signal fits the model for an artificial signal. If they found candidate stars with possible earth-like planets in that area, that is very exciting. It means we not only have a strong candidate signal, we also have a strong candidate location.
There is an "if" in that statement of course - this study has only identified a possible star, not any planets. And it is also all based on the presumption that any artificial signal could only come from a planet in a Sol-like star system. This is interesting and could potentially lead to something more but I don't feel it is hugely significant in and of itself so shouldn't be spun up to much just because it implies something some people really want to believe.
But it is missing the most important thing that is required in science. That it can be repeated. And in almost 45 years of observations, this has never been repeated, nor anything even close. So in the end, it does not really matter if it is never repeated. And I actually was an active participant in the SETI@home program for over a decade. And interesting experiment, that ran for over two decades and went through all of the backlog of signals captured from many sources, checking them over and over again. And in the end, even they admitted they found nothing. Most who are active in the SETI community have long ago dismissed this, and most seem to agree it is likely of terrestrial origin. Oh, and I actually took the time to hunt down the actual article. https://www.cambridge.org/core/jour...e-wow-signal/4C58B6292C73FE8BF04A06C67BAA5B1A It actually discusses nothing really of the signal itself. It simply in the end tries to find any stars in the region the signal came from. And nothing more than that. And the author of this "paper" is rather interesting. First of all, the author (Alberto Caballero) does not seem to have any other articles posted anywhere. So we have a mysterious "scientist", with no credentials, apparently no postings or background of note, and nothing previously published. And I finally did track down a bit more about him. He is an "amateur astronomer", and runs a YT channel called "The Exoplanets Channel". All about SETI, searching for and finding intelligent life, antimatter rockets, and other such things. And this paper he apparently wrote over 2 years ago, and it only now finally found somebody to publish it. https://www.youtube.com/c/TheExoplanetsChannel This is why I tell people over and over to not just believe anything they see, especially on the Internet. Research the information, and especially the source. And despite all the hype some articles gave this thing, it really is nothing. And the individual that wrote it is largely a joke.
Of course. It isn't proof of anything. But it is highly compelling. All your nonsense is obvious. The point is that this makes it far more interesting.
Why would it need to be from a planet? If such a signal were real for all we know it could be a distress call in all directions from a colony that is not on a planet. We're still not very good at seeing Earth-like planets, but who cares since life could have easily started on a non-earthlike planet. The most important factors are it's not explainable by non-intelligent phenomena (which is hard, because we don't actually understand the universe very well), and of course that it isn't coming from Earth.
Something else is that it could depend on the planet's rotation. For example, we toyed with the idea of broadcasting a signal from Arecibo. But the direction of the broadcast would have been dependent on the rotation of the earth. So an alien looking for us might have seen a brief signal and may never look at the right moment again. So one transmission does not necessarily mean there are regular transmissions we can detect. I don't believe we ever did broadcast but I'm not sure. I recall that Stephen Hawking was against it. His argument was basically, "Don't tell them where we are". The biggest problem could be that radio has a very short lifespan. It only lasted here on earth a little over a century. As we convert to LASER and microwave and far more efficient technologies, we are going radio silent. For the last 100 years, if we were aliens in another part of the galaxy, we could detect earth using radio. But that won't be true much longer. Arecibo, which only recently collapsed and was decommissioned.
It is not proof of anything, just silly speculation. And my nonsense is obvious? Do you deny that he is just a youtube poster who runs a site that is not even good science fiction?
Oh, there have been many projects that transmitted messages into space for others. One of the first was from Arecibo in 1974. SO you should look into that some more, we have in fact done so.
