
SETI spots dozens of new mysterious signals emanating from distant galaxy - vfc1
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/10/seti-neural-networks-spot-dozens-of-new-mysterious-signals-emanating-from-distant-galaxy/
======
rubyn00bie
I have a question... and this is probably a stupid question, but... does
anyone know if there is any theory to support the idea that sufficiently
advanced civilizations rely on something other than radio waves or light to
perform communications? My dumbass-self wonders about quantum entanglement or
teleportation as means of communication we have yet to master; may be, the
medium of communications for the super civilizations of the universe.

Note: Just wanted to say, I'm less trying to talk about "FTL" and more so that
we may just not be able to intercept, decode, or "see" the communications via
our current technologies.

P.S. Thanks for the thoughtful replies.

~~~
jerf
It depends on whether you want to stay grounded in real-world physics, or if
you want to spin off on flights of fancy.

If you want to stay in real-world physics, at the moment there is no reason to
expect any civilization to use anything other than electromagnetic radiation
for communication. Other than the low speed of light, which is a
characteristic of the universe that it does not seem to allow any faster-than-
light communication so it's not _specially_ a disadvantage for EM,
electromagnetic radiation basically has every characteristic you're looking
for in a communications medium, and there's little reason to believe even an
advanced civilization would use something orders of magnitude worse on
numerous dimensions simply because maybe they can. This is for much the same
reason that we _could_ transport everything in our civilization by people
carrying things around on Segways, but we don't, because why would we
deliberately choose something suboptimal?

If you want to go off on flights of fancy, then anything is possible, but
there's no way to say anything useful about it.

The "grounded in reality" answer is subject to change as our understanding of
physics improves, but at the moment I wouldn't say there's any particular
reason to expect this answer to change much. Even on the crazy fringe
frontiers of real science, I am not aware of any candidates for communication
any better than EM.

Most of the whacky ideas proposed as alternate methods fail by orders of
magnitude vs EM. Might you be able to build a better neutrino detector than we
can? Maybe, but it's still easier to build EM detectors, and EM emitters, by a
lot. Gravity waves? Why on not- _Earth_ would _anyone_ spend the massive,
massive amounts of energy required to do that, very klunkily and with very low
bandwidth, when for literally a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of
a trillionth the energy expenditure you could use EM, and get higher bandwidth
to boot and better reusability to boot? Quantum entanglement and teleportion
are non-starters, because they both require a conventional channel to work at
all, and the best tool for that communication is EM.

~~~
21
Even with EM, they could have a highly advanced encoding format which is
barely detectable about the random noise floor (spread spectrum like). US army
uses these kind of techniques to make the signal both hard to detect and hard
to jam.

Who knows how far you can push this, maybe to the point where it's essentially
impossible to detect the signal if you are not the intended target.

~~~
reaperducer
There's also the possibility that some ET's may _want_ to be known, and are
sending out an easily-detected beacon.

That might be our best hope.

~~~
keyboardtyper
I have a half-baked idea that some alien planet's marketing team is probably
using pulsars as an advertising stunt. "Relax on Risa" and the like. I don't
know how one would go about modulating a pulsar's output, but pulsars are seen
everywhere.

~~~
smegger001
Maybe a modified star lifting process could work to change the pulsars pulse
rate?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting)

------
cletus
For anyone interested in this or related topics I highly, highly recommend the
series of 100+ videos in Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur ("SFIA") [1].

Relevant to this topic:

\- Fermi Paradox series (15 videos) [2]

\- Advanced Civilizations (19 videos) [3]

\- Alien Civilizations (10 videos) [4]

Of particular relevance is the Kardashev scale [5]. The basic idea is this:
unless something catastrophic happens, humanity is destined to become a
Kardashev-2 ("K2") civilization without a blink of a cosmic eye (measured in
thousands of years). Since the timeline from sentience to K2 is so short
(cosmologically speaking) it seems pretty unlikely there are other spacefaring
civilizations in our galaxy.

It's worth noting that the scale of such a civilization is so immense and what
it is capable of with access to that much energy and resources tends to debunk
a lot of ideas that come out of a search for explanations to the Fermi
paradox.

For example, there is the idea that civilizations might "hide" and would not
be detectable. Such an effort would be futile vs a K2 civilization however.

I mention this because there is the idea that aliens might not use radio
technology. Doing so wouldn't keep you hidden from a K2 civilization so
there's no point in trying. And I find this a compelling line of reasoning.

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g)

[2]:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIIOUpOge0LulClL2dHXh...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIIOUpOge0LulClL2dHXh8TTOnCgRkLdU)

[3]:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIIOUpOge0Ls3WMYP_2Fp...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIIOUpOge0Ls3WMYP_2FpP9Y0mjgtf98M)

[4]:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIIOUpOge0Lu97HzMt_BJ...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIIOUpOge0Lu97HzMt_BJu36UMaItB1cm)

[5]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dArpj_VxxuQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dArpj_VxxuQ)

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
I made this comment earlier but to me the most logical explanation to the
Fermi paradox is the vast amount of time between existence of any 2
civilizations. While many could in theory exist in the same Galaxy, the cosmic
scale makes it unlikely that any two will ever share the same time scale, thus
making any possibility of contact unlikely.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
You've gotta keep relativity in mind here. If a species can develop a means of
simply traveling at roughly 1g acceleration indefinitely, they will become -in
terms of time- practically immortal. A single human can travel literally
billions of light years in a single lifetime by continuing to accelerate at 1g
for years at a time. Here [1] is a calculator to determine how long it would
take to travel a given distance at a given acceleration. A common
misunderstanding is the difference between observed mass increases and
perceived. _Your_ mass does not increase as you approach the speed of light
relative to something else. But your _observed_ mass does.

Anyhow, the point here is that once a species reaches this level of
technology, if it's possible, they will start to move beyond anything like the
borders of time as we understand them.

In my opinion, the most simple and probable explanation is technology (we
don't know what's out there), but that's closely followed by the terrifying
great filter being complete and unadulterated pleasure. As lives become easier
and more pleasurable, the inherent drive towards procreation becomes less and
less of a factor. If that reaches below a certain point, that's lights out for
a species. Create a guaranteed means of subsistence on a planet, perhaps
entirely automated, and now create a technology that becomes more inherently
enjoyable and rewarding than procreation itself. Congrats you evil villain,
you've destroyed your species in a far more effective way than any weapon ever
could. Society goes out not with a bang, but also not with a whimper; they go
out with a moan of pleasure.

[1] -
[http://convertalot.com/relativistic_star_ship_calculator.htm...](http://convertalot.com/relativistic_star_ship_calculator.html)

~~~
russdpale
This is basically what I think. Why traverse the universe when you can upload
your brains into a matrix type simulation and place your hardware in orbit
around a brown dwarf and then live basically forever. No one will ever find
you.

------
Exuma
I remember running SETI @ Home on my 300 MHz Gateway and watching the pretty
graphs as if I was a real life alien spaceship pilot. It's funny to hear that
it's actually a real thing (I knew it was real, but when I saw the size of the
radio dish in the image, it's REALLY real)

~~~
savanu
Its the Greenbank telescope in West Virginia. I don't think its particularly
associated with SETI.

The telescope is available on a rental basis. People just schedule it to point
it wherever.

~~~
cgriswald
> I don't think its particularly associated with SETI.

That depends on what you mean by "associated". It's not associated directly
with SETI the institute, but it was the site of the first
systematic/scientific search (and false positive) for extra-terrestrial
intelligence lead by Frank Drake. It is also the place where The Order of the
Dolphin (Drake, Carl Sagan, Otto Struve, _et al_.) met and developed the Drake
Equation.

~~~
savanu
The one in the picture is the 100m dish. Frank Drake used the 25m dish. Just
being nitpicky, I get your point.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation#History)

------
dboreham
Underlying source : [http://seti.berkeley.edu/frb-
machine/](http://seti.berkeley.edu/frb-machine/)

and paper : [http://blpd0.ssl.berkeley.edu/frb-
machine/CNNFRB_eprint.pdf](http://blpd0.ssl.berkeley.edu/frb-
machine/CNNFRB_eprint.pdf)

------
stephengillie
> _The high degree of rotation of the nearly 100 percent polarized radio
> bursts is unusual, and has only been seen in radio emissions from the
> extreme magnetic environments around massive black holes, such as those at
> the centers of galaxies. The Dutch and Breakthrough Listen teams suggest
> that the fast radio bursts may come from a highly magnetized rotating
> neutron star – a magnetar – in the vicinity of a massive black hole that is
> still growing as gas and dust fall into it.

The short bursts, which range from 30 microseconds to 9 milliseconds in
duration, indicate that the source could be as small as 10 kilometers across –
the typical size of a neutron star.

Other possible sources are a magnetar interacting with the nebula of material
shed when the original star exploded to produce the magnetar; or interactions
with the highly magnetized wind from a rotating neutron star, or pulsar._ [0]

Do any terrestrial sources create polarized radio waves? Would polarization
help beamforming or other range-extending techniques?

[0][http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/01/10/seti-project-homes-in-
on...](http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/01/10/seti-project-homes-in-on-strange-
fast-radio-bursts/)

~~~
delecti
I'm certainly no expert, but the Wikipedia article on the subject says this:

> All radio (and microwave) antennas used for transmitting or receiving are
> intrinsically polarized. They transmit in (or receive signals from) a
> particular polarization, being totally insensitive to the opposite
> polarization; in certain cases that polarization is a function of direction.
> Most antennas are nominally linearly polarized, but elliptical and circular
> polarization is a possibility. As is the convention in optics, the
> "polarization" of a radio wave is understood to refer to the polarization of
> its electric field, with the magnetic field being at a 90 degree rotation
> with respect to it for a linearly polarized wave.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarization_(waves)#Radio_tra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarization_\(waves\)#Radio_transmission_and_reception)

So it's less that it helps, and more that it's inevitable.

------
Eli_P
I've converted series of those images to audio, it's obviously swipes and
trills only. I wish I could get my hands on higher resolution images to get a
drop of a real alien dubstep, not some cheap microwave oven blues.

~~~
NegativeLatency
Could you post a soundcloud link or something? I’d be interested to hear what
you’ve got.

~~~
Eli_P
Uploaded.

SoundCloud: [https://soundcloud.com/xca8biolusw4/sets/seti-space-noise-
ma...](https://soundcloud.com/xca8biolusw4/sets/seti-space-noise-mapped-to-
audio)

Conversion script used:
[https://gist.github.com/ptytb/6eade153de6f54dbc0fc1fc0d46993...](https://gist.github.com/ptytb/6eade153de6f54dbc0fc1fc0d469939e)

------
VikingCoder
Wow, this seems really exciting. This could be huge!

Narrator: It wasn't.

~~~
dustfinger
It is exciting because we can't explain it yet. That makes it interesting and
worthy of study.

>> This could be huge!

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the humor and understand how the media tends
to over hype any news that could potentially excite people interested in the
discovery of little green men, but I never felt that this particular article
was doing that.

~~~
fishtoaster
I felt like this particular article was almost bizarrely moderate in its tone.
It managed to talk about ML and a new seti discovery in a balanced manner,
discussing both the optimistic and realistic takes. I guess I'm just so used
to modern headline writing that I'm pleasantly surprised when someone _doesn
't_ publish "Artificial Intelligence finds aliens." :)

------
cortic
>noisy galaxy 3 billion miles away

that's only 0.00051 of a light year, or a few light hours away.. either me or
them has a big math problem.

~~~
harrygallagher4
The press release says 3 billion light years. Probably just a mistake at TC

PR:
[https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/news/22](https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/news/22)

------
harshulpandav
I wonder why many people visualize aliens to be entities with flesh or
something else like how species (that move or grow) on earth. I think aliens
can also be in the form of new elements, rocks, gases, waves, or some entity
which is beyond the ability of 5 senses of humans to perceive. Currently we
use other methods to transform perception of entities so that humans can
see/feel/hear/understand. But the devices we build for this purpose are built
using earth elements. It could also be probable that earth might not be having
those elements which are required to give humans the ability to perceive other
entities.

~~~
fermienrico
I think there is more to life than just flesh and senses. Fundamentally, what
makes living organisms "living" is the DNA (in primordial soup, it was RNA).
Self-replicating systems lead to evolution almost magically... spontaneous
processes (that minimize energy and are driven by thermodynamic imbalance)
tend to create "competition" as they use up resources. The ones that make
barriers or membranes, can protect the resources and end up replicating in
larger numbers or faster.

We know that Carbon is essential in creating these self replicating entities.
Its abundance is also known in the universe. So, it is not so unrealistic to
presume that aliens won't be something that we can see on earth. I am curious
of the differences of the forms of life that can originate though.

Imagine if we rerun 2 billion years of evolution again with a different
initial conditions. Surely, we'd have different forms. Contrarily, eyes have
evolved independently in many organisms over a dozen times. So, there is some
commonality there. Just like the eye, there are many similar biological
processes that evolve independently (arteries/veins, neuron, heart for
circulation/extraction, ceramic structural components/bones, etc.)

I used to think about the same question that you are also wondering but the
deeper you go down this rabbit hole, you are realize the importance of why
things in living beings are the way they are. They're solutions (however
imperfect) to an evolutionary problem.

~~~
saagarjha
Why would DNA be essential? Why limit "life" to just carbon-based lifeforms?

~~~
fermienrico
It could be another self-replicating entity. It doesn't have to be DNA. But
self-replication is the __basis__ for evolution of life. Sure, it could be
made from other elements...but why wonder if other elements can create self-
replicating entities when you can measure the amount of Carbon in the
galaxy...right from here on earth! Carbon is more abundant than say Strontium.
Carbon is created inside a star, Strontium is created through Supernovae
explosions.

Also, Carbon can form 4 covalent bonds more easily than Si (same family). Si
can form 4 covalent bonds but they're weaker than Carbon due to the distance
from the nucleus. I am sure someone more familiar with Chemistry can chime in,
but Carbon is a special element in the Universe.

~~~
dogma1138
Indeed carbon is special in this regards it's also produced in star fusion and
space is filled with organic material because carbon, oxygen and hydrogen are
abundant.

Also the main reason why silicon is worse is because of catenation, which
carbon is much better suited for:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catenation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catenation)

~~~
fermienrico
Thanks for adding to the discussion. I learned something new.

~~~
dogma1138
You were right it's because of the covalent bonds formed, however the biggest
difference seems to be not in how these are formed with other elements but how
carbon is essentially optimal at bonding with itself creating huge chains.

This property is why there are so many different and interesting forms of
elemental carbon.

These chains are the scaffolding for all biochemistry both because they are
very stable and also because they have very interesting properties.

Chains can be either open or closed depending on various factors such as
charge, temperature and other forces that play on molecular levels allows you
to play with that geometry.

Having strong chain bonds not only builds stable chains but it also build
chains that can change their state while remaining intact and biochemistry
heavily relies on the ability to change the geometry of complex molecules
without breaking them apart.

------
jeletonskelly
So, aren't we sending out radio signals in a spiral as the planet rotates that
would be massively spread out over a distance of 3 billion light years? If I
were broadcasting something into space constantly some alien civilization
would only be exposed to perhaps a very short portion of the signal until
Earth had fully rotated again and my signal lined up perfectly to their planet
again.

~~~
yannyu
EM waves are spherical in nature (analogous to ripples in a pond) rather than
directional. So the rotation of the earth wouldn't significantly affect the
strength/reception of the signal by a distant planet. The bigger factors would
be signal degradation because distance and other kinds of interference.

~~~
jerf
"EM waves are spherical in nature (analogous to ripples in a pond) rather than
directional."

No, they aren't. This is an approximation taught to you in high school to make
certain problems more tractable. You've got at least two methods of generating
non-spherically-expanding EM waves sitting in your pocket right now; neither
your phone's screen nor its flashlight are perfectly spherical in emission.
This is trivially observable by the fact that the orientation of the phone
impacts your perception of its brightness.

It's true that you can't make a "fully" directional EM wave with no spread
whatsoever, but you can make it arbitrarily small with engineering effort, and
they're trivially not spherical.

~~~
abdullahkhalids
Any EM waves created to be highly directional at earth-scale distances quickly
lose that directionality at galactic-scale distances. Doesn't have to be
spherical, but it will quickly spread out over distances much greater than
typical solar system sizes.

~~~
blacksmythe
Not true. See beam divergence:

    
    
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_beam

------
ndarilek
"Seventy-two new “fast radio bursts” from a mysteriously noisy galaxy 3
billion miles away"

Wait, what? I thought space is big. Really big. This mysterious distant galaxy
is practically in our backyard.

~~~
emiliobumachar
About as close as Pluto. No wonder it can't be a planet.

~~~
microtherion
Message probably says: "Get us in touch with your Plutocrats".

~~~
wu-ikkyu
Our plutocrats don't take kindly to illegal alien aliens.

------
Razengan
I'd just like to address a pet peeve by saying that the Fermi Paradox is dumb.

It's often thrown around as a low-effort dismissal as if it were a fundamental
law that must be fulfilled for extraterrestrial intelligence to be considered.

It's a relic of a less-informed era when space was filled with aether and
green-skinned humanoids were fancied to inhabit the Moon and Mars, and flying
vehicles were expected to be our primary mode of transportation by 20 years
ago.

An extreme simplification that basically says "If X then Y MUST follow. If no
Y then no X."

——

We have long had the technology to establish a permanent presence on the Moon,
why haven’t we done so by now?

We have the tech to put men on Mars, why are we not even planning to do that
already?

We can build photovoltaic cells, why isn't the Earth covered in them yet?

There are still uncontacted tribes on this very planet untouched by modern
civilization, why haven't we uplifted our own species yet?

I guess we don’t exist either.

~~~
c048
The fermi paradox works on a different timescale than the points you bring up,
which is exactly why it keeps being brought up.

Our civilization has existed for only several thousand years. That is nothing
on the cosmological scale. The fermi paradox asks why, when looking at the age
of the universe, there is no visible (to our level of technology) trace of
other civilizations. Even when expanding at a crawl, a civilization having had
a million of years to do so should have reached every corner of our galaxy.

The fermi paradox is simply a question: why? Suggestions, like a civilization
uploading itself to some sort super computer to experience eternal life, are
answers to the fermi paradox. But they do not invalidate it.

~~~
Razengan
> _a civilization having had a million of years to do so should have reached
> every corner of our galaxy._

 _Why?_ Why indeed.

Why should they? Why is it desirable to do so?

Why haven’t _we_ done many of the things that we technically could have done
in our timescale by now?

“They should have reached every corner of our galaxy” relies on _at least_ the
follow assumptions:

• That it is desirable to them.

• That their ability to reproduce/replicate can keep up with their technology
to expand.

• That their presence on every planet they colonize lasts indefinitely.

• That there is no force—natural, adversarial or internal—that counters
unrestricted expansion.

• That they even _can_ expand in all directions. (Again, consider our own
solar system and how useless, hostile, uneconomic or unstrategic some of the
planets in it would be to humans.)

• Following on the previous point, that they’re dumb enough to spread
themselves thin by colonizing every sub-optimal planet, instead of cherry-
picking the planets which are best suited for them or, indeed, constructing
their own artificial habitats in space.

• That we have the ability to detect all signs of alien presence on all stars
and all planets, including any possible artificial worlds and rogue planets.

• That we have the ability to detect all PAST alien presence: An species may
have already colonized this galaxy once, but thanks to the aforementioned
timescales we may have missed running into them by a few million years, like
we missed the dinosaurs on our own planet.

——

The Fermi Paradox is a flawed premise that itself needs to answer many other
“why”s before its “why” can be answered.

“Intelligent Life -> [Long enough timespan] -> Intelligent Life on every
planet around every star.”

A -> [B] -> C, where [B] makes a ridiculous amount of assumptions, then takes
the absence of C to invalidate the possibility of A.

~~~
spenczar5
The Fermi Paradox, like any good paradox, isn’t a “premise;” it’s a tool to
_reveal_ premises. Your thoughtful comment on many possible explanations for
why we might not see aliens is exactly what I like about the Fermi Paradox -
it makes you think.

~~~
Razengan
My issue is with when it's still reverently referred to as a serious argument
against the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence, even after we have
had enough time to see that an intelligent species doesn't necessarily expand
to other worlds just because it can.

------
breck
~ 100TB an hour of data.

I’m guessing it doesn’t compress well. Do they write that to disk or filter it
in memory and only pass on a subset?

~~~
ggggtez
If it was compressible, that would mean there was a repeating pattern. The
whole point is that the data is extremely noisy, so finding a pattern is
difficult.

~~~
iamgopal
So finding SETI is all about finding compressible data ?

~~~
andbberger
Actually, yes. There's a deep connection between the compressibility and
predictability of things. But we're not good at learning the complex
distributions needed for these sorts of things - there's a long standing
competition for natural language compression, the idea being if you can do
that perfectly you basically have human level semantic understanding.

------
NKosmatos
400TB in 5hr??? So in 18000 sec (5hr×60min×60sec) they saved 409600 GB...
which roughly is a transfer speed of 22.7GB/sec. I'm wondering what type of
SSD raid they've got :-)

~~~
saagarjha
I'm sure the data is coming in from multiple sources and being stored on high
capacity tape archives or something, if it's not just being thrown away at
some point after analysis is complete.

~~~
pheon
Not possible, write bandwidth of tape is not very high.

My guess is they have a cabinet / 42U worth of HDD arrays, by the numbers they
need ~ 176Gbps write bandwidth which is totally possible even in half a
cabinet.

400TB worth of SSDs @ 176Gbps write bandwidth is also very possible, would be
~ 4U expect but extremely expensive.

------
szemet
_" from a mysteriously noisy galaxy 3 billion miles away"_

That is good news, that galaxy is close enough to visit;) :

[https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&q=3+billion+miles+to...](https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&q=3+billion+miles+to+lightminute)

[https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/](https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/)

------
dustfinger
I am glad the information was not presented in a sensational way. I find Fast
Radio Bursts really interesting. They have been discussed on HN many times.
For those interested see:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=fast%20radio%20burst&sort=byPo...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=fast%20radio%20burst&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

------
superkuh
It's cool that a single dish telescope discovered so many FRB within a short
time but the fact that it was done with SETI time on GBT doesn't make FRB as a
concept a SETI thing. It's an unexplained thing but broadband radio bursts
aren't exactly uncommon in nature. FRB are just really far away.

The swept curve as shown in the spectrograms is probably because of distance
to the signal and frequency dispersion due to charges along the line of sight.
FRB are originally broadband pulses that distort in the medium getting here.

It looks like these ones are pretty simple quick burst. The latest discovered
by the UTMOST all-sky interferometer recently had a complex bursty structure
over time,
[http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/research/utmost/?p=1475](http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/research/utmost/?p=1475)

Instruments like UTMOST and other all-sky digital processed arrays (like SKA
and children) should get some every hour once everything is running and
optimized.

------
kumarvvr
> 3 Billion miles

That is ridiculously close. For reference, the distance between sun and earth
is about 150 Million miles.

~~~
cscurmudgeon
The reporter probably assumed light years are a measure of time and "fixed"
it.

------
kmetan
Lets hope that they allready checked the microwave oven

~~~
ISL
Kmetan is serious. Half of the first detections of FRBs were traced to a
microwave oven at Parkes Observatory.

------
otto_ortega
What amuses me is the fact that we are so obsessed with finding civilizations
that have an equal or superior level of technology than we do... If such
civilization does exists, and if they are anything like us... Our history show
us things will NOT end well for us!

The more advanced civilization will eventually (always...) conquer the less
advanced civilization when in need (or desire...) for resources.

It is like if a deer were obsessed to find the hunter that will put its life
to an end...

If the question we are trying to solve is "Are we alone?" we have better try
to look for "less advanced" forms of life, like marine animals or something
like that...

Otherwise we will get the kind of reply we are not looking for... IMHO

~~~
kruczek
> The more advanced civilization will eventually (always...) conquer the less
> advanced civilization when in need (or desire...) for resources.

I think this doesn't translate so directly into space. If they are thousands
of light years away, then they will have plenty of other planets nearby to
harvest for resources.

~~~
celticninja
It all depends on what sort of resources they are looking for, no one is
crossing light years to come steal water from us, when there are other planets
that have water (perhaps as ice) and would be undefended. However if they
needed territory and the earth had an environment that was hospitable to them
then yes they might very well travel light years to invade.

------
coleifer
Please let it be aliens

~~~
gnulinux
I'm interested in aliens especially because of biological curiosity. I wonder
how did their evolution happen, what unique futures their species developed,
from what sort of creatures they evolved (if they're primate-like too, that
would be very weird), do they have emotions like humans, why did their brain
evolve so large?

------
spullara
The background radiation is actually the universal communication band
broadcasting the entire knowledge of every civilization that has ever existed
but sadly it is encrypted so appears to be random.

------
AnimalMuppet
72 new bursts, on top of 21 already identified, in _five hours_ of data. Total
of 93 bursts in five hours, for an average of one every 3 minutes 14 seconds.
That's... rather surprising.

~~~
ChillyWater
If it is actually an average of one every 3 minutes 14.159265359 seconds ...
now you've got something.

~~~
jemfinch
The length of the minute and second are arbitrary.

~~~
OccamsLaser
Plus, if they don't use Tau by convention, they aren't even worth discovering
in the first place.

~~~
GeorgeTirebiter
Now you've come full circle. You'll next be suggesting we use IBM 360
computers.
[http://ibmsystemsmag.com/mainframe/trends/z-os/complete_360/](http://ibmsystemsmag.com/mainframe/trends/z-os/complete_360/)

------
cpeterso
Using machine learning to anaylze mystery signals reminds me of Stanisław
Lem's novel _His Master 's Voice_ (1968). It's a fictional memoir of a
mathematician working on a Manhattan Project-like project to analyze a signal
from space. The book is like a cross between _Contact_ and _Catch-22_.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Master's_Voice_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Master's_Voice_\(novel\))

------
dvh
Can we please stop calling FRBs mysterious signals when we already have name
for them. It's not something new it's FRB. They set out to find FRBs and they
found FRBs.

------
WheelsAtLarge
People are so quick to classify anything that can't be explained immediately
as extraterrestrials. I would bet a lot of money that this has nothing to do
with extraterrestrials only because after so many years there is no proof that
such exist.

Come on everyone get back into reality and look for the true answer. A true
scientist tries to disprove his/her theory until there can be no other answer
as opposed to picking the first theory and going with it.

~~~
topmonk
There is _some_ evidence for it:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_O%27Hare_International_Ai...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_O%27Hare_International_Airport_UFO_sighting)

~~~
WheelsAtLarge
UFO does not equal extraterrestrial. It's an acronym for an unidentified
flying object. Also, for many years the air force promoted the UFO idea as a
way to cover their aircraft research.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_conspiracy_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_conspiracy_theory)

~~~
WheelsAtLarge
oops wrong link

Here's the right one:

[https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2010/09/16/the-
truth...](https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2010/09/16/the-truth-behind-
ufo-sightings-and-the-us-air-force)

------
aresant
If you haven’t read “Three Body Problem” - warning spoiler alert - the premise
was mind blowing to me - that the reason aliens aren’t broadcasting signals is
that more mature spacefaring societies use those signals as targeting vectors!
Eg aliens aren’t interested in making contact, and our efforts to broadcast
our location could be inviting our ruin.

~~~
bluGill
Possible, but not something I'm worried about. Those "mature" societies are
still limited to the speed of light, they would have to be willing to wait out
an average trip of thousands of years just to wipe out new civilizations in
our galaxy - assuming the new civilization survives that long.

~~~
lolsal
> Those "mature" societies are still limited to the speed of light,

Isn't that just an assumption though? As short as 1000 years ago traveling to
the moon seemed impossible.

~~~
hyperbovine
FTL would break a lot of other evidence-based findings in a way that lunar
travel did not.

~~~
HeadsUpHigh
Correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding is that newer theories of physics
do not exactly overthrow older ones. The conservation of energy for example
still holds true for everything that Newton observed it at but for in other
situations it falls apart. So E=mc^2 is an extension of the original law. Same
thing with the theories of relativity, they explain Newtons observations as a
subsection of a bigger system.

Afaik nothing in current physics prevents FTL from being logically possible.
Nothing predicts it either but that doesn't mean it's impossible.

~~~
yoklov
Special relativity says it's not possible.

General relativity says that maybe you can get something equivalent by taking
non-linear paths through space-time but those sorts of things require very
radical types of matter to avoid collapsing into a black hole. And
realistically, it's IMO very unlikely that these sorts of things would remain
in a more complete (e.g. quantum) theory of gravity.

------
SeanTankGarvey
I've always thought of EM (Radio/Communication Technologies) as potential
tools to confirm specific sources/locations of other intelligent life as well
as possibly their purported agenda/intention/lifestyle/threat-level? (or level
of intelligence and even to develop [flawed but useful, a.i. based] predictive
algorithms of their future likelihood of physical contact/threat and/or their
rate of scientific advancement, based on analysis of numerous factors
including their encoding used, past broadcasts compared to current, means of
broadcast, etc. Etc. Etcetera.) [STRICTLY LIMITED TO/AT the time of the
broadcasts, not at the time we receive them... BIG DIFFERENCE IN ASSUMING THAT
THE TWO ARE THE STILL THE SAME!]. Never in my wildest dreams, would I consider
us as humans advanced enough to ACTUALLY RESPOND (IN WAY THAT WAS COMPLETELY
SAFE, FORETHOUGHT, LOGICAL, CALCULATED, MORAL, AND MUTUALLY-BENEFICIAL!). We
shouldn't knowingly, directly communicate or reply to forces beyond our
wildest comprehension, for what we wish to be a dream for the future of
mankind could quickly turn to its worst nightmare, if we are not careful,
moral, loving, prudent, and conscientious. We should not have the audacity to
treat our supposed Galactic neighbor(s) based on behavioral assumations, if we
ever resort to treating them any way whatsoever, which until we reach a far
greater point of advancement (both materially, defensively, socially,
scientifically, technologically, and, in all honestly, Spirtually) I advise
against, 100% completely. Just my take. Learn what we can without exposing
ourselves.

------
sebazzz
I know we have optical telescopes in space. Don't we have radio telescopes in
space too, like SETI? Why not?

~~~
vkou
The atmosphere is really good at distorting optical signals. It's not as good
at distorting radio waves.

Additionally, radio telescopes tend to be enormous - much bigger then optical
telescopes. It's one thing to launch a bus-sized instrument into orbit. It's
another to launch a stadium-sized instrument into orbit.

------
siavosh
3 billion miles away, typo?

~~~
admax88q
lol yeah.

Other articles say 3 billion light-years, slightly further than 3 billion
miles haha.

~~~
iscrewyou
Ever so slightly.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
So, the "mysterious signals" are Fast Radio Bursts?

I mean, it's not that we know what those are exactly, but I was under the
impression that nobody really takes them as alien broadcasts. And they _have_
been observed before- just not by SETI's CNNs apparently?

------
amgin3
447 comments here and not one questioning how this "mysteriously noisy galaxy"
ended up being closer to us than Pluto.. (article says this galaxy is "3
billion miles away", Pluto is 4.67 billion miles from Earth).

------
edgarvm
Seeking for alien messages sent to nobody is silly, we have more chances to
find extraterrestrial civilizations if we look for two points that seem
talking to each other, I know, easier said than done.

------
mordae
We are not looking for data. We are looking for slow, noisy beacons to know
where to look for the data.

Much like WiFi AP beacons are on a lower frequency than data transfers or how
lighthouses are hard to miss.

------
based2
[https://www.obspm.fr/spip.php?page=imprimer&id_article=2998](https://www.obspm.fr/spip.php?page=imprimer&id_article=2998)

------
tankerdude
im Kind of stumped at the whole advanced life form contacting us thing.

1\. We didnt even emit any real radio waves until just a century or so ago.
How did they detect it to know to emit something to us? 2\. How much power
would that entity have to emit from that distance to be detectable by us? 3\.
And for civilizations more than 50 light years away, how did they know to even
push a signal in our direction if they didn’t sense a single thing except
maybe a certain type of atmosphere?

------
okonomiyaki3000
Don't respond right away, it looks desperate. Wait a day or two. Does anybody
know if SETI automatically sends read receipts? Turn that off if at all
possible.

------
person_of_color
Is there an explanation of FRBs that uses terminology that someone with a
University education of DSP would be accustom to?

------
Schmazo
The first paragraph of the article says the galaxy is 3 billion miles away.
That might be a editing error.

------
interfixus
> _a mysteriously noisy galaxy 3 billion miles away_

Some close galaxy, that!

------
happy-go-lucky
I want to believe in SETI's findings, but is this true?

------
mbrumlow
This is cool, but TC's site is shit. THis seems to be just a article to push
you to a iPhone advertisement that loads once you scroll down.

------
jordache
more like deficient machine learning code rather than actual intelligence
findings.

------
vram22
The novel Contact by Carl Sagan was pretty good in this area of SETI.

------
gpsx
I have trouble connecting to the cell tower down the street. I don't know how
they are going to receive a real communication signal from that many light
years away.

~~~
oarla
Doesn't have to be a signal with meaningful data, just something that can be
identified as not noise.

~~~
gpsx
As a serious question, aside from communications, what are examples of things
they are looking for?

------
SilentM68
A lot of unexplained happenings occurring all of a sudden. First mysterious
signals from space and now the sudden closure and lock-down of the New Mexico
Solar Observatory: [https://www.abqjournal.com/1219922/nm-solar-observatory-
clos...](https://www.abqjournal.com/1219922/nm-solar-observatory-closed-
authorities-mum.html)

~~~
dmix
Was that observatory even operational?

~~~
SilentM68
That's a good question? Only someone local from that area, e.g. not me, would
be able to answer that. Here's another question, even if it was not
operational, then why all the secrecy surrounding the closure last Thursday.
Even if it was some sort of break-in, or similar, occurrence, there is usually
some sort of PR of some kind, but not providing information usually leads
people to speculate, e.g. UFOs, aliens, which is now the case on social media
sites: [https://www.kansascity.com/news/nation-
world/article21838556...](https://www.kansascity.com/news/nation-
world/article218385560.html)

------
syndacks
Aliens == God

As humans, we wish something greater exists. It minimizes the noise in our
otherwise meaningless lives. It gives reason.

And so we make up stories and find stories in signals and get excited at the
prospect that _this_ just might be it.

But it never happens. And we go on searching and believing, and then we die.

~~~
pluto9
Why do they have to be "something greater"? Most people would be thrilled if
we found the alien equivalent to a jellyfish. People like aliens because we're
curious creatures and aliens are unknown and interesting.

I've never understood why some people feel the need to inject their mopey
nihilism into everything.

~~~
syndacks
Quite the opposite, my friend. I'm a humanist. IMO each bit of energy expended
in the search of aliens is an opportunity cost to do something real here on
Earth. So while you get excited about theoretical space jellyfish (or
colonizing Mars, or the Second Coming of Christ (not you, specifically, just
in theory I group these together)), I will excite myself with the alleviation
of human suffering and preservation of planet Earth.

~~~
EForEndeavour
> each bit of energy expended in the search of aliens is an opportunity cost
> to do something real here on Earth

How do you feel about other activities that don't provide immediate, tangible
relief to human suffering or environmental impact? What is your opinion of
people who devote their lives to artistic, literary, musical endeavours, or
who write software for social-media companies?

------
nautilus12
How long would it take radio waves to travel 3 billion light years? If it is a
communication it would be from very far in the past. Assume it takes life
about the same time to evolve on other planets wouldn't that mean that we
wouldn't expect to start hearing radio communications until billions of years
from now?

~~~
gnulinux
Yes, assuming this is an actual intelligent life sending us radio waves, we're
seeing their signals sent 3 billion years ago. So it's entirely possible their
species already went extinct or they left their home planet for galactic
expedition. Practically, nothing is the same about this civilization since
they sent this signal.

To put this into perspective: when this civilization sent this signal, there
was merely unicellular life on the earth!

