Strange Signal Comes From Alien Planet, Scientist Says

Discussion in 'Astronomy, Exobiology, & Cosmology' started by Brian Foley, Oct 11, 2010.

  1. Brian Foley REFUSE - RESIST Valued Senior Member

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    'and been met with harsh skepticism among the science community'

    With good reason, as I know it Space is full of flickers and flashes both explained and unexplained. For him to make a declaration that this was some kind of signal is foolish. He should take up climatology.
     
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  3. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Maybe he detected alien signals coming from Uranus.
     
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  5. Brian Foley REFUSE - RESIST Valued Senior Member

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    Collecting klingons...
     
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  7. dhcracker Registered Senior Member

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    not the first time this has happened..

    source: damninteresting
     
  8. phlogistician Banned Banned

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    But as the data was recorded, and has not been interpreted as containing any information, it doesn't really compare to the 1974 Arecibo message, does it?
     
  9. dhcracker Registered Senior Member

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    NO it doesn't really..

    I don't buy this, "they wouldn't just send the signal once" idea. First what if they don't want us to know they are there! Why else would we not be broadcasting our own signal...

    Oh btw as that article says we did broadcast our own signal. ONE TIME....

    sheesh they should be monitoring those systems 24/7 ON ALL WAVELENGTHS. Why just monitor radiowaves for petes sake!
     
  10. phlogistician Banned Banned

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    A digitally encoded signal utilising prime numbers that when interpreted correctly conveys information. That's what we broadcast. That's NOT what we picked up.

    Who is 'they'? Who is going to fund that? What other wavelengths do you think should be monitored, and how, precisely?
     
  11. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    How much would it cost, these days? Separate array for each wavelength group?
     
  12. dhcracker Registered Senior Member

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    Heck I would point my own dish and donate the power costs of doing it, why not make an array of volunteers? How many old unused C-band satalite dishes are spread out over the country that we could setup and modify for this purpose? Lots I bet, heck all you need is a simple solar panel set and a wireless data access point. Wouldn't cost that much done privately.
     
  13. phlogistician Banned Banned

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    And what is stopping you from doing this then, if you think it's so important?

    How are you going to monitor all bands using equipment made specifically for Satellite TV?
     
  14. dhcracker Registered Senior Member

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    You don't... just use the dish and you order recieving equipment for whatever bands you want to monitor....
     
  15. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    It's that simple?
     
  16. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    Hardly!!! It would require a *very* wideband receiver with tremendous gain (amplification), some amazing noise-canceling circuits and a very expensive spectrum analyzer - and that's not to mention the costly recording equipment.

    That's all assuming, of course, that you could be satisfied just monitoring a single frequency and it wouldn't bother you if you found something but couldn't show it to anybody else since it only lasted a short time. (Or missed it completely because you couldn't stay with it 24/7 for life - and that's just for the last item on the list.) <smirk>
     
  17. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Hmm. So at a guess, how much would it cost to widen the frequency range of the search into a couple more bandwidth groups?
     
  18. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    Several grand. Good equipment is not cheap and the noise suppression will cost you almost as much as the enhanced receivers - maybe even more. (You don't want to be picking up re-reuns of Mork and Mindy or Delta flight-191 while you're looking for "Albert the Real Alien."

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  19. Gustav Banned Banned

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    A tidal wave of data has begun crashing over astronomers' heads, and they'll have to up their game to avoid being swamped.

    Astronomers have already shifted to a more passive role, said astronomer Joshua Bloom of the University of California, Berkeley. Ever since digital photography came on the astronomical scene a few decades ago, they've been spending less time gazing at the heavens and more time combing through databases, he added.

    And that trend is only going to accelerate, as more advanced telescopes haul in ever-increasing mountains of data.


    Astronomy Overload: Scientists Shifting From Stargazing to Data Mining
     
  20. dhcracker Registered Senior Member

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    You are exaggerating the cost and complexity, and further you don't need to spend lots of money on gain when you use an array.. thats the entire point of using an array to begin with.

    And you don't go and buy a single reciever that reads from gamma to radio... but that would indeed cost several thousand dollars. What you do is you make use of what equipment is available, say if I have some microwave, infared, and radio recievers then my station will only monitor those bands. If my neighboor has xray recievers then he will monitor those bands. We would collect and store our data to be uploaded to a central site that would be used to first further sort and inspect the data then analyze it when needed.

    Also for your locality you can use a simple spectrum analyzer like what they have for Cable TV RF meters. Most have spec analyzers you just plug it up to an antennea and it typically checks from 30 mghz up to 3 ghz depending on the model.

    Anyway you'll probably want a setup to go anywhere from 400 mghz to maybe 4 ghz for a simple setup. At least in that range you can almost make one for nothing.

    Even if you want to get a fancy spectrum analyzer its not as expensive as you are implying. You can get decent ones for this purpose for a couple hundred bucks on ebay. You can also get the recieving system specificaly for this for a couple hundred bucks, even farther up the spectrum the systems aren't that expensive. You don't need a high powered setup so much as you need a good solid antennae mounted PERFECTLY.

    I've seen people wast hundreds of dollars on amplifiers and I have fixed their dishes by simply moving them and getting them pointed right. If you don't get it setup right your actually just using part of the dish, the feedhorn has to be mounted PERFECTLY. And well for radio astronomy its not quiet as hard to get the dish right as it is for say pointing it at satalites for TV reception.

    Anyway.. lol you guys got me started on another project now!! I can't afford a big optical telescope but I bet I could make a really nice radio telescope!
     
  21. phlogistician Banned Banned

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    Dude, I used to work with a bunch of Astronomers, and they used automated algorithms to detect and categorise objects 15 years ago. Since then they have moved onto parallel and distributed computing systems, like Beowulf, and Cloud to utilise every CPU they can get their hands on.

    But this shows it's not as simple as dhcracker thinks it is. We are talking about huge volumes of data, and the guy that built the Beowulf cluster is a leading expert in data analysis techniques or parallel processors, and gives seminars on that, as well as doing his Astronomy day job. And that is just once you get the data. As Read-only has stated, there's the cost of the equipment to gather the data to be factored in. A bunch of scrap satellite dishes just won't cut it.
     
  22. phlogistician Banned Banned

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    Receive X-Rays with a satellite dish? Hell, I must rush down to the University X-Ray astronomy Dept and tell them they have been wasting their efforts on concentric glancing angle mirror arrays, when all they needed was a scrap dish!

    X-Rays have a tendency to pass through things. They only reflect at really shallow angles, and a parabolic surface doesn't provide the right incidence. IE, satellite dishes will not focus X-Rays.


    Funded by whom? Or are you going to use free web/cloud space?

    'When needed', er, how do you know when a particular data set is 'needed'?

    No you can't. You need to record the entire stream of data, frequency, modulation, amplitude, and most importantly, the co-ordinates of the source. You can't just glance at an off the shelf tool. You need to record all of this data.

    You need to know where you source is, which means accurately recording where you are pointing. How do you propose to do that?
     
  23. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    Meanwhile, in far away space.............................

    Dolphinworld, 2010

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    Dolphin 1: I hope some really nice planet will hear our signal soon.
    Dolphin 2: Yes, and I hope they are even more loving than us.
    Dolphin 1: So we can learn from them. Shall we sing the Dolphin song of Peace?
    Dolphin 2: Yes, Lets. Ohoooooooooooooooioooooooo.................
    Dolphin 1: Ohoooooooioooooooioooooooooiiiii.............
    etc
     
    Last edited: Oct 16, 2010

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