If this is real, we are about to enter a new chapter in civilization.

[_Augustus_]

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2109139-strange-signals-from-234-stars-could-be-et-or-human-error/

https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1610/1610.03031.pdf

We may have just found 234 different alien civilizations that are trying to communicate with lasers.....

[Scotius]

Wow, 234 possible hits? That's a lot of possibilities. What are they doing, playing with their cats using laser pointers on a mass scale?

[Rakaydos]

234 civilizations using the exact same frequency of laser.

What's so special about that frequency?

[Streetwind]

Probably the fact that they miscalibrated their instruments and the signal is an artifact of measurement.

Probably.

[Darnok]

58 minutes ago, Rakaydos said:

234 civilizations using the exact same frequency of laser.

What's so special about that frequency?

They could be all communicating with each other on same frequency?

[Rakaydos]

1 minute ago, Darnok said:

They could be all communicating with each other on same frequency?

International standards are bad enough, I can only imagine how difficult it would have been to come up with an interstellar standard for comunication when the negotiations take thousands of years each way.

Yea, I'm calling bull.

[Green Baron]

That guy is a nutcase. Liquid telescopes on the mun ....

Presenting aliens as an explanation for a natural phenomenon disqualifies him as a natural scientist, if he ever was one.

This is mainly an outcome of the new habit that everyone can publish everything in pre-print servers and social networks. Don't be fooled too easily, guys.

 

Edited October 26, 2016 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

Suddenly we realize ourselves as a mouse in a telecommunication enclosure in a data-center of intergalactic internet provider. Hope, sysadmin is busy with MMORPG.

[p1t1o]

Oh holy heck thats a long paper, tl;dr for reelz.

I cant really tell how good the science is, maybe its sound Im not sure. The authors credentials seem to check out - in so far as I googled the university and his name and it didnt mention perpetual motion or conspiracies...

But just because its more fun, I'll skip straight to cynicism.

Points:

First off, that is not a link to a peer-reviewed journal. Peer reviewing has its problems, but its something.

Distinct lack of lots of squiggly equations for such a long paper, seems odd.

Signal resembles an ET source because thats what they decided an ET signal would look like in a previous paper? 

Complete lack of things like prime numbers or other commonly accepted intelligence indicators in the signal. Was there any data in the signal at all? Not much of a "signal" otherwise. Unless its buried in the paper but I figure that would be in the conclusion somewhere...

234? All keen on communicating? Just going purely on Occam's razor I would believe a paper about how we are all in the matrix before that...

Wasn't there a thing a while ago about a possible Dyson Sphere being discovered? Now this? What is next?

The lead author wrote an article for scientific american in 1994 on the subject of liquid mirrors. FWIW I have heard of liquid-mercury telescopes before and they at least seem legit.

 

 

 

***edit***

Snopes to the rescue:

http://www.snopes.com/strange-signals-are-probably-extraterrestrial/

Long&Short -

Almost the entire scientific community thinks their ET conclusions are extremely far-fetched.

The conclusion that it could be aliens because it matches his own prediction of what a signal would look like is circular.

There is a lot of language like "this is highly speculative but it could be ET" is leant on far too heavily. On a side note a lot of publications seized upon this and started publishing articles with titles like "Scientist say signal is probably aliens!" and stuff - this however is more of a problem with scientific journalism, and a very deep-seated one at that.

 

Edited October 26, 2016 by p1t1o

[78stonewobble]

Well, unless it's human error in the measurement... Then I think it's probably human error in regards to:

"Borra and Trottier ruled out other possible explanations for the pattern, like rapid pulsations in the atmospheres of the stars themselves and rotational transitions in molecules. “We have to follow a scientific approach, not an emotional one,” says Borra. “But intuitively – my emotion speaks now – I strongly suspect that it’s an ETI signal.”"

Either they didn't rule other known possible explanations... or there is an alternative explanation in the form of new stellar science to be discovered.

[Darnok]

2 hours ago, p1t1o said:

Complete lack of things like prime numbers or other commonly accepted intelligence indicators in the signal. Was there any data in the signal at all? Not much of a "signal" otherwise. Unless its buried in the paper but I figure that would be in the conclusion somewhere...

 

 

Just look at our regular communication we are also not using any prime numbers.
You assume that those signals are for communication purpose with "new neighbours", not regular communication with other outposts/space stations/probes of some advanced civilization .

 

[p1t1o]

7 minutes ago, Darnok said:

Just look at our regular communication we are also not using any prime numbers.
You assume that those signals are for communication purpose with "new neighbours", not regular communication with other outposts/space stations/probes of some advanced civilization .

Ok, fair point, however what we do transmit is incredibly information-dense, which stands out significantly from random or regular signals. The paper itself presupposes that the signals are intended to get our attention, but that is part of the problem, I think the author has pre-supposed quite a lot.

To be honest though, I dont know enough to say it is definitely bunk.

[KerikBalm]

1 hour ago, 78stonewobble said:

Either they didn't rule other known possible explanations... or there is an alternative explanation in the form of new stellar science to be discovered.

I think its this, as its only a very narrow range of stars that exhibit this behavior, despite the range of stars being suitable for life being much larger than that range

12 minutes ago, Darnok said:

Just look at our regular communication we are also not using any prime numbers.
You assume that those signals are for communication purpose with "new neighbours", not regular communication with other outposts/space stations/probes of some advanced civilization .

 

Yes we are, all the time as keys particularly for encryption, and we send a lot of encrypted data.

Also, the signals we send, while not just primes, are still highly complex. This signal has no variance, its a very very simple signal that couldn't encode any more data than the following: ..................................................................................................................... (ad infinitum)

https://seti.berkeley.edu/bl_sdss_seti_2016.pdf

Pulsars were thought to be signals at first as well. But its just simple repetition. A signal of . . . . . . . is much much less meaningfull than . .. ... .... ..... ...... .......  or . .. ... ..... ....... ...........

A natural explanation was found for pulsars, and if this is just a simple repeat, a natural explanation can probably be found for this.

Also note these people are claiming/speculating that these are lasers *aimed at us*... not signals amongst themselves.

If their goal was to get noticed, a pattern more complex than . . . . . . . would be expected

[YNM]

They do present a lot of their datas though. Now, only if someone somewhere is interested in looking back through their data and re-analyze it again...

I'm surprised they don't present the "noise" (ie. those that they don't classify as some different signal), though. Maybe I haven't looked at it long enough. Also, are all the data is taken at the same time or what ?

Edited October 26, 2016 by YNM

[Darnok]

37 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Ok, fair point, however what we do transmit is incredibly information-dense, which stands out significantly from random or regular signals. The paper itself presupposes that the signals are intended to get our attention, but that is part of the problem, I think the author has pre-supposed quite a lot.

To be honest though, I dont know enough to say it is definitely bunk.

That is because your text is complex message, but what if you would have to transmit something simple... like signal from distant probe that would carry only one message "probe is alive"?
 

27 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

Also, the signals we send, while not just primes, are still highly complex. This signal has no variance, its a very very simple signal that couldn't encode any more data than the following: ..................................................................................................................... (ad infinitum)

So my idea that those are probes sending super simple message that they still "alive" is still valid

What I found, at least strange, reading about scientists looking for other civilizations is that they are looking other civilization that wants to be found. While we are civilization that doesn't transmit anything, because we are too afraid that someone finds us

Edited October 26, 2016 by Darnok

[p1t1o]

11 minutes ago, Darnok said:

What I found, at least strange, reading about scientists looking for other civilizations is that they are looking other civilization that wants to be found. While we are civilization that doesn't transmit anything, because we are too afraid that someone finds us

I dont think we are being *that* cautious about it...

[Red Iron Crown]

41 minutes ago, Darnok said:

While we are civilization that doesn't transmit anything, because we are too afraid that someone finds us

We have deliberately sent signals meant to be decoded by an unknown extraterrestrial receiver.

[Darnok]

5 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

We have deliberately sent signals meant to be decoded by an unknown extraterrestrial receiver.

Ok, but sending text "world peace" or 10000 tweets is going to look like noise from receiver point of view?

If we would convert any post from this discussion into radio signals like we do normally during communication how would this message look like?
SETI would even classified it as "possible intelligent message" or just one more random noise?

[p1t1o]

44 minutes ago, Darnok said:

Ok, but sending text "world peace" or 10000 tweets is going to look like noise from receiver point of view?

If we would convert any post from this discussion into radio signals like we do normally during communication how would this message look like?
SETI would even classified it as "possible intelligent message" or just one more random noise?

It may seem like jumbled noise, but it would definitely show signs of information content, it would be distinct from random noise. (It is also significant that it would be exceedingly unlikely to resemble any naturally-produced signal, ruling those sources out.)

I think even an encrypted signal can be analysed for information content without first knowing how to decipher it. Ie: if someone "encrypts" some random noise, and then separately encrypts a dictionary, you would, without knowing how to decrypt it but with some analysis, be able to tell which encrypted signal contained information, and which one just contained noise. I think.

**edit**

Possibly relevant:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory)

 

Edited October 26, 2016 by p1t1o

[rudi1291]

27 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

I think even an encrypted signal can be analysed for information content without first knowing how to decipher it. Ie: if someone "encrypts" some random noise, and then separately encrypts a dictionary, you would, without knowing how to decrypt it but with some analysis, be able to tell which encrypted signal contained information, and which one just contained noise. I think.

In fact, many modern encryption requires that you can´t distinguish between two encrypted messages even if you know the unencrypted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciphertext_indistinguishability

Many encryption algorithms use pseudo-random number generators to generate keys, and ideally that shoudn´t allow to tell if its random noise or not.

That means, that an encrypted signal looks a lot like random noise. Encrypted signals are not the best way to make someone else notice you...

[p1t1o]

2 minutes ago, rudi1291 said:

In fact, many modern encryption requires that you can´t distinguish between two encrypted messages even if you know the unencrypted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciphertext_indistinguishability

Many encryption algorithms use pseudo-random number generators to generate keys, and ideally that shoudn´t allow to tell if its random noise or not.

That means, that an encrypted signal looks a lot like random noise. Encrypted signals are not the best way to make someone else notice you...

Ah is that so, clever. It does seem to imply at least, that some effort has to go into making the data encrypt that way, and that different types of encryption have different levels of vulnerability to this type of analysis.

[wumpus]

1 hour ago, rudi1291 said:

In fact, many modern encryption requires that you can´t distinguish between two encrypted messages even if you know the unencrypted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciphertext_indistinguishability

Many encryption algorithms use pseudo-random number generators to generate keys, and ideally that shoudn´t allow to tell if its random noise or not.

That means, that an encrypted signal looks a lot like random noise. Encrypted signals are not the best way to make someone else notice you...

Not only that, a sufficiently compressed signal should be indistinguishable from pure noise.  And even worse, it will likely contain FEC (forward error correction, absolutely needed since retransmission will be so slow) such that the signal+FEC data will only be indistinguishable from pure noise if the signal/noise ratio is *just* high enough (because they are talking to/focused on *you*).  And even then you will likely have a compressed signal that is meaningless without the decompression method.  My understanding is that hard drives are well into this point (if you lose significant data, the whole thing is gone).  It really doesn't matter if the thing is encrypted or not, if you don't have the s/n *and* the decoding scheme (and then the compression method), you aren't recovering the signal.

You aren't going to be decoding any signal from a high tech source unless such bandwidth is essentially free.  If they are using a specific frequency, that bandwidth is certainly *not*.

On the other hand, AM radio (amplitude modulation with dual sidelobes, carrier present: the most obsolete modulation possible) still exists.  It is an absolute efficiency disaster from a broadcasting standpoint, but an absolute trivial means of recovery.  I'd suspect that any such message would be *meant* to be decoded, and likely exist as messages (for whatever reason) for wildly more primitive civilizations (as the receiving tech would be less than the broadcasting tech).  It would most certainly not be used for primary communication.

[KAL 9000]

3 hours ago, Darnok said:

That is because your text is complex message, but what if you would have to transmit something simple... like signal from distant probe that would carry only one message "probe is alive"?
 

So my idea that those are probes sending super simple message that they still "alive" is still valid

What I found, at least strange, reading about scientists looking for other civilizations is that they are looking other civilization that wants to be found. While we are civilization that doesn't transmit anything, because we are too afraid that someone finds us

So you mean the probe is transmitting "......", but its creators will know when it stops functioning when they don't "hear" the signal? That does seem reasonable, but that basic "I'm alive!" signal would probably have more data than that, like what systems have failed (if any), power output of its solar panels/RTGs/whatever at the moment, etc...

[p1t1o]

I am learning that identifying information-containing signals amongst the noise is more complicated than I thought, but here is a thing - if it is so common for data to be indistinguishable from noise, encrypted or otherwise, then how are we so confident that all the noise we hear *is* noise, and not dense datastreams?

[wumpus]

5 hours ago, p1t1o said:

I am learning that identifying information-containing signals amongst the noise is more complicated than I thought, but here is a thing - if it is so common for data to be indistinguishable from noise, encrypted or otherwise, then how are we so confident that all the noise we hear *is* noise, and not dense datastreams?

A high-information signal would likely be one of uniform power and frequency distribution (although this might only be true over longer periods of time than you are looking at, you really don't know with other life forms*).  A noisy [natural] signal would likely have a power distribution more often associated with natural causes.  When we say "indistinguishable from noise" we typically mean "indistinguishable from uniformly selected values", not that such uniform values typically exist (they often follow power or 1/f laws).

* it might have other weird properties as well, but it should still look "unnatural".