Did we just get a hello from aliens?

Aliens at Proxima Centauri? A New Radio Signal Raises the Question

The signal was found by Breakthrough Listen, a privately funded effort to search for signals from intelligent beings.

Breakthrough Listen scientists recorded the signal while monitoring Proxima Centauri for flares to understand how they might affect conditions on the star’s planets.

The radio signal appeared in multiple observations of Proxima Centauri taken by Parkes in April and May 2020. The signal wasn’t noticed until later.

Why the signal could be aliens
The signal frequency, 982 megahertz, is not typically used by spacecraft.

This by far is the closest we have come to showing alien life. If this doesnt turn out to be earth based then we might have made contact.


www.forbes.com...
www.planetary.org...

It’s 2020 and nothing would surprise me at this point. One day we will get a result. It may not be the one we want, but I do figure eventually something is going to “knock” back.

I was listening to an old Art Bell Coast to Coast podcast the other day and they were discussing SETI. The guest (can’t recall his name so this will just be hearsay) but he said that SETI receives so many signals from “out there” that they deliberately had to block most of them because the sheer number of them was jamming up the system.

Now take that with a grain of salt as I can not remember the episode or the guest’s name. But it struck me as absurd as I was listening. We have supposedly been searching for alien life forms since the idea formed in our brains. Now you’re trying to sell me on the fact that we are now receiving more than we can handle so you just turn it off??? Dirty lies!

Let´s hope for 2021 as the year we defeat covid and make contact with aliens.
These signals from space stories stories are very interesting but there are a lot of unknown factors, lets hope for a clear signal.

a reply to: dragonridr

No, you didn't. The frequency of the signal you detected is certainly 982 MHz, but that does not mean the original signal was transmitted at that frequency.

See, a radio transmitter which is accelerating with a non zero radial component with respect to a receiver will produce a signal that appears to change its frequency over time. This effect is produced in astrophysical situations where orbital and rotational motions are ubiquitous. It is what we call a drift rate. You need to guarantee the signal's frequency is not drifting; if it shows no drift, the signal is close to near-Sol-3 orbit, or even on its surface.

This is so because an electromagnetic transmitter which is approaching or receding from a receiver at a constant velocity will produce a signal that will be measured at a blue shifted or red shifted frequency relative to the rest frequency of the transmitter. If the transmitter is accelerating radially with respect to the receiver you will get a signal whose frequency changes over time. You need to know the chirp (in Hz/s) as a key parameter to ascertain the signal is not produced naturally by the exoplanet , an exoplanet they have not yet identified and so, given the current situation, the signal may very well come from the star itself.

You need more observations to calculate the drift and be able to discard that the characteristics of the star and exoplanets in the system under observation is not affecting the resulting drift rate. Even then, you still need to undo the smearing of data in order to correct for the drift rate to maximise theSNR.

However, I must confess I have not looked at the original raw data (is there a way to download the raw data?), so I cannot conclude about the nature of the signal. I ignore if Breakthrough Listen looks for continuous wave radio signals or not. Assuming they do, then they most likely class the detected signal as potentially artificial due to its frequency modulation or bandwidth characteristics, and I assume they are perfectly aware you can still compress signals in time, producing signals that are broadband but still easily distinguished from most known natural sources. But you need more observations, using different algorithms to categorize the signals, before stating the signal is artificial.

My current take is that they have detected a signal generated by their own in-lab instrumentation.

Even travelling in the fastest space ship it would take 25,000 years to get there.... so aliens or not, it makes no difference. We'll never see them.

And if they are inly capable of lobbing out radio signals, then they are not capable of travelling 4.3 light years at a speed that means we can have legitimate meeting with them.

I suspect this signal is not aliens.

originally posted by: dragonridr
Aliens at Proxima Centauri? A New Radio Signal Raises the Question

The signal was found by Breakthrough Listen, a privately funded effort to search for signals from intelligent beings.

Breakthrough Listen scientists recorded the signal while monitoring Proxima Centauri for flares to understand how they might affect conditions on the star’s planets.

The radio signal appeared in multiple observations of Proxima Centauri taken by Parkes in April and May 2020. The signal wasn’t noticed until later.

Why the signal could be aliens
The signal frequency, 982 megahertz, is not typically used by spacecraft.

This by far is the closest we have come to showing alien life. If this doesnt turn out to be earth based then we might have made contact.


www.forbes.com...
www.planetary.org...

Nah...If they were trying to communicate they'd use a radio frequency we use and they would use a language we know...

But more likely they would drop some leaflets from one of the millions of UFOs we all see every year...

a reply to: Iscool

How? We are so far apart that even light takes thousands of years to reach us. That whole star could be gone by now just that for us the potons still keep coming. Like you sway a garden hose, the water needs time to travel and if you shut off the valve, the last drops flying out still need time. The ground only informationally knows a few moments later that the valve has been closed. Even with the speed of light, we, the ground, are so far away from the garden hose it takes thousands of years until we noticed that the star has vanished.

You look at the past if you see the night sky. Unless you entertain the idea of FTL communication, your assumption they would use a language we know is not founded by logic.

First they would have to know what language we could understand. For that they need to receive something from us first, if we speak about radio signals, we do not send long enough someone that far could have received it yet.

There's a huge time discrepancy here.

a reply to: Iscool

And when our star ships meet in space, they’ll always be facing in the right orientation for a good tv show dramatic queue

Sorry, your post made me chuckle in a good way. I needed it

originally posted by: Kangaruex4Ewe
It’s 2020 and nothing would surprise me at this point. One day we will get a result. It may not be the one we want, but I do figure eventually something is going to “knock” back.

I was listening to an old Art Bell Coast to Coast podcast the other day and they were discussing SETI. The guest (can’t recall his name so this will just be hearsay) but he said that SETI receives so many signals from “out there” that they deliberately had to block most of them because the sheer number of them was jamming up the system.

Now take that with a grain of salt as I can not remember the episode or the guest’s name. But it struck me as absurd as I was listening. We have supposedly been searching for alien life forms since the idea formed in our brains. Now you’re trying to sell me on the fact that we are now receiving more than we can handle so you just turn it off??? Dirty lies!

I love your new cute avatar.

I was fairly certain Steven Greer had talked to Art about that on some old shows I was listening to a few months back. I decided to look it up and it appears it was notable enough for an article. It has a slightly different twist, he's calling shenanigans on some secret agency.

"They have had numerous extraterrestrial signals," Greer said, during the radio broadcast. "They were apparently searching in a spectrum or in an area . . . where they hit the mother lode. The signals were so numerous that they began to have their systems externally jammed by some sort of human agency that did not want them to continue receiving those signals."

a reply to: dragonridr

My guess is they're asking for more and better movies , we haven't sent one since 2008 and that was a bit of a dud here on Earth ... although perhaps they liked it for its quirky Earthiness.

Pity the poor residents of Alpha Centauri. The studios could have chosen one of thousands of classic films to beam in their direction to give them a first taste of Earth culture: instead, what the Alpha Centaurians will be getting is a painfully insipid, Keanu Reeves-starring piece of sci-fi piffle, Variety reports.

In a Hollywood first, Twentieth Century Fox said it had used equipment at Cape Canaveral to beam The Day the Earth Stood Still, Scott Derrickson's remake of Robert Wise's 1951 classic, to the nearest star system to Earth - a transmission that will take four years.
www.theguardian.com...

Or given the film maybe they're signaling their surrender.

a reply to: dragonridr

I've been closely following this news with great interest.

although they claim it's seemingly extremely hostile to life

Still a technologically advanced civilization may have moved in.

a reply to: Direne

No they ruled out the option of the microwave in the break room. If it is earth-based signal it would have to be a satellite. This is not in the realm of impossibility since several countries are now launching them. Do to being such a narrow band it is unlikely to be a natural occurrence well let me say one that we are aware of. the other thing your right this would be redshifted unless it is an object heading towards us. What makes it unusual is if this is in orbit its at a frequency we normally wouldnt use.

Now I guess I will tell you what they do to verify a signal.

First they use a technique called “nodding,” where the telescope will spend a period of time looking at a target and then an equivalent period looking elsewhere in the sky, to check that any potential signal is truly coming from the target and not, say, someone microwaving their lunch in an observatory’s cafeteria.

So it passed this test meaning they ruled out interference now it could have been a technical error of some kind but this is the Parkes observatory I think they would have caught that as well.

Now I get your point even though a natural cosmic source may seem unlikely, it cannot yet be ruled out—and, the thinking goes, as unlikely as a natural explanation might be, an “unnatural” explanation such as aliens is even less likely still.But science doesn't work that way you go where the data takes you. The paper is expected out next month for the observation so we will have to see what conclusions are drawn.

What I was thinking about is if this was an alien signal its unlikely life developed in Proxima Centauri both prospects appear to be tidally locked meaning life would have a very difficult time developing. If there is intelligent life there, it would almost certainly have spread much more widely across the galaxy. The chances of the only two civilisations in the entire galaxy happening to be neighbours, among 400bn stars, absolutely stretches the bounds of rationality.

The other option a ship and we caught a signal or maybe a probe sent to the system checking in? Other option is this alien race is long dead and we just happen to catch some automated signal from equipment that could be millions of years old.

Fun to speculate isnt it?

a reply to: gortex

Well with 4 light years between us they should be getting dead pool soon and suicide squad was ok I guess. And to them Trump would just be taking office.

a reply to: reject

Yes I dont think intelligent life would develop there at all. but maybe they put something there to observe us? wouldnt that be strange

originally posted by: gortex

My guess is they're asking for more and better movies

My guess is any civilization that detects our signals, will learn to decode them around the time "ALF" arrives. Then they'll send an annihilation force, either out of sheer insult or just to put us out of our misery.

As for the OP, it would be eye-raising if any intelligent modulation is found in the signal.

originally posted by: and14263
Even travelling in the fastest space ship it would take 25,000 years to get there.... so aliens or not, it makes no difference. We'll never see them.

And if they are inly capable of lobbing out radio signals, then they are not capable of travelling 4.3 light years at a speed that means we can have legitimate meeting with them.

I suspect this signal is not aliens.

If they come here, who’s to say what their technology is? And you are basing your theory off our fastest “known” spaceships.....

a reply to: dragonridr

TBH I think we already have Alien life here... Jellyfish, Squids and Octopus could be the Aliens of the deep, they are so unique from other Sea life, they just havn't evolved enough to walk on land or maybe they were never meant to walk on land.

The Octopus for example has three hearts, nine brains and blue blood, making reality stranger than fiction and very Alien sounding. They also use camouflage and are toxic.

Jellyfish have no heart and no brain.

So.... I reckon we already have aliens here in the Oceans and Seas.

a reply to: dragonridr

Logic tells me we need no proof. No "announcement" is necessary.

They know this. They don't want our gold, to eat us, enslave us, breed w us. Why? Why not?

Because we would be incinerated, eaten, resources stolen waaaaay before now.

Traveling the Stars....I'm guessing they would have already just taken it/us. They have not.

originally posted by: ThatDamnDuckAgain
a reply to: Iscool

How? We are so far apart that even light takes thousands of years to reach us.

This star is only around 4 light years away, so in this case, not such a big time difference. It's relatively close as far as stars go Our radio waves have made it there as well.