X-Ray Signal coming from space?

F

Frizoid

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http://goo.gl/AWppk0

Is it possible we've finally picked something up from extraterrestrial life? I know there was an MIT professor, Seth Lloyd, back in 2013 who said that aliens could be dark matter.

"But, Lloyd also notes that the overwhelming majority (85%) of our universe is made of dark matter, a substance that scientist still do not understand. In contrast, regular matter only accounts for 4.9% of the universe. Therefore, Lloyd proposes that "the aliens are the cold dark matter that makes up 23 percent of the energy in the universe. Adept at cloaking themselves, they are invisible under any force that can be shielded."
 
welcome.

Aliens could be dark matter? Well, that seems insane to me and since the good doctor is wrong when he says that 85% of the universe is dark matter I think it is safe to dismiss the his ideas.
 
This is not about a signal from extraterrestrial life, Frizoid.

What they are saying is that the x-ray spectrum in the range they have detected from the Perseid, Andromeda, and Milky Way galaxies does not correspond to any known emission from atomic structure in the way that stars (bright line) and nebula (absorption) spectra typically do.

This is a significant observation and I expect to hear more about it when they finish their analysis some time later this year. Hopefully, it won't turn out to be another one of those instrumentation artifacts like BICEP last year.
 
Interesting to note, that many now within NASA and other scientific institutions , are joining Seth Shostak from SETI in predicting we will have evidence for or some form of contact within 20 years.
Time and distance are the great barriers to overcome, but it will be done eventually I'm sure.
 
danshawen said:
This is not about a signal from extraterrestrial life, Frizoid.

What they are saying is that the x-ray spectrum in the range they have detected from the Perseid, Andromeda, and Milky Way galaxies does not correspond to any known emission from atomic structure in the way that stars (bright line) and nebula (absorption) spectra typically do.

This is a significant observation and I expect to hear more about it when they finish their analysis some time later this year. Hopefully, it won't turn out to be another one of those instrumentation artifacts like BICEP last year.
Click to expand...
Explain which instrument involved in the BICEP2 experiment that 'messed it up'? LOL. What you don't know is analysis of the experimental data is ongoing. Using the Planck experiments greater resolution. In the end they'll know for sure what's associated with cosmic dust and what's associated with the signal they are looking for in the CMBR . idiot wind.
 
dark matter?
why not just call it magic?
and the search for wimps goes on and on and on and on
 
Frizoid said:
http://goo.gl/AWppk0

Is it possible we've finally picked something up from extraterrestrial life? I know there was an MIT professor, Seth Lloyd, back in 2013 who said that aliens could be dark matter.
Click to expand...

It was a joke. He called it a "modest proposal" referring to Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick,
Swift's idea was more outrageous and funnier.
 
brucep said:
Explain which instrument involved in the BICEP2 experiment that 'messed it up'? LOL. What you don't know is analysis of the experimental data is ongoing. Using the Planck experiments greater resolution. In the end they'll know for sure what's associated with cosmic dust and what's associated with the signal they are looking for in the CMBR . idiot wind.
Click to expand...

This actually is good news. I'm all in for continuing analysis of the Planck data. I hadn't read about this anywhere yet. Thanks.

It wasn't the instrument that "messed up", obviously. Detecting the polarization of weak microwave signals / CMBR is, no doubt, a tricky prospect at best. Anything that needs to be done for the whole sky with even medium accuracy is going to be a major project in terms of funding. That is why I might have second thoughts about funding it at the expense of one like the present discussion of this thread. I'd probably lean toward putting off further research until technology improves sufficiently to do such a thing faster and with better accuracy. Idiot wind? If you think so. Idiots do fund a lot of science and astronomy.
 
We all know that a radio wave signal that is sent anywhere will eventually be weakened so much that it will not be able to be picked up. So how can the signals we send out or any "aliens" send out ever reach us since no one knows where to send a signal and that signal won't be strong enough to reach us.
 
cosmictraveler said:
We all know that a radio wave signal that is sent anywhere will eventually be weakened so much that it will not be able to be picked up. So how can the signals we send out or any "aliens" send out ever reach us since no one knows where to send a signal and that signal won't be strong enough to reach us.
Click to expand...

Yes, even a beam as collimated as a laser attenuates over interstellar distances, so one would need first to pinpoint, and then track the direction of the distant civilization. The multi-year delay between two way communications would be another issue, and as a practical limitation, about 20 light years would be the most distant we could manage to extract the weak signals, even with the robust error correction and low data rate techniques we use for our deepest space probes. Any civilizations out there would need to be at least as distant from the core of the Milky Way as we are, (or else they would be sterilized-- because even galaxies have "Goldilocks" zones), so that narrows down the choices a little. SETI was always a long shot.

However, this thread answers a question Farsight posed in another thread: "What process do you know of which produces a photon that is not an electron (or a positron)?"

The x-ray signal just detected, evidently, is such a source, and we currently have no idea what it might be.
 
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