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SETI receives signal possibly from an intelligent extraterrestrial civilization
AN UNEXPLAINED radio signal is the best candidate yet for "first
contact" by an intelligent alien civilisation, scientists have suggested. The enigmatic signal has been picked up three times since last year by the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, making it the most exciting result of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence programme (Seti). It does not carry the signature of any known astronomical phenomenon, and does not appear to be the result of natural interference or noise, according to researchers who have studied its frequency pattern. This means that it could have been transmitted deliberately by an extra-terrestrial species on a distant planet, though experts cautioned that this remains unlikely. For the past six years, Seti has been hunting aliens using Seti@home, a project that harnesses the power of millions of personal computers around the world to sift through radio signals picked up by the Arecibo telescope. Individual computers load a screensaver, which allows Seti@home to use their processing power when they are idle. The new signal, which originates from the region of space between the constellations Pisces and Aries, is the most tantalising to be analysed with this powerful new tool, researchers told New Scientist magazine. Please read the whole article: [ http://www.theinsider.org/mailing/article.asp?id=568 ] |
#2
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There is also this:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/0...eut/index.html (possibly the same article - the one on cnn certainly lacks any details that would be intersting, anyone know any actual facts?) -- == The *Best* political site URL:http://www.vote-smart.org/ ==+ email: icbm: Delray Beach, FL | URL:http://home.att.net/~Tom.Horsley Free Software and Politics ==+ |
#4
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(P. Backus) wrote in message . com...
(Alert) wrote in message . com... AN UNEXPLAINED radio signal is the best candidate yet for "first contact" by an intelligent alien civilisation, scientists have suggested. Check the follow-up article in The Guardian with what Dan Werthimer really said. http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/news/...295799,00.html Of course the media hyped it, that's how they sell their product, but the story is true. http://www.theinsider.org |
#5
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"Alert" wrote in message om... (P. Backus) wrote in message . com... (Alert) wrote in message . com... AN UNEXPLAINED radio signal is the best candidate yet for "first contact" by an intelligent alien civilisation, scientists have suggested. Check the follow-up article in The Guardian with what Dan Werthimer really said. http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/news/...295799,00.html Of course the media hyped it, that's how they sell their product, but the story is true. http://www.theinsider.org Of course the story is true. It's just that it doesn't seem to be a signal from aliens. HTH |
#6
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from Dan Werthimer in Arecibo to SETI League
Da: "Dr. H. Paul Shuch" Inviato: Venerd́ 03/09/2004 00:41:07 -0400 A: "Dr. H. Paul Shuch" Cc: Oggetto: SETI public: False SETI@home alarm, courtesy of the press SETIzens, Today, I've received nearly a hundred emails about a three-time SETI@home hit, reported in today's New Scientist. Sorry to throw a wet blanket on this otherwise exciting announcement, but I have to tell you the press attaches more significance to this observation than do the astronomers themselves. Here is the text of an email received today from SETI@home director Dan Werthimer of U.C. Berkeley (and now in Arecibo): it's a zero on the rio scale. none of our candidates are very interesting - they are all consisitent with noise. we will continue to observe many of the candidates over the next few years, but there's nothing on the candidate lists we are particularly excited about. a reporter from new scientist read the seti@home web pages: in particular there's a section on "candidate signals" where we discuss how we score signals and we show the data from the 220 candidates we re-observed at arecibo 1.5 years ago. these web pages are old, but the reporter made an exciting story about them, by exagerating their content and mis-quoting us and quoting us out of context, and making a press release about one of the candidates that has a bit higher score than the others. i talked to a couple of reporters today, explaining we've seen stuff like this for the last 30 years, and it's always turned out to be rfi or noise, and that there's nothing to get excited about, and that when you look at 50 trillion bytes of data, occasionally you'll find patterns that look unusual just from noise... i wish we had something in our data to get excited about. tomorrow we'll start using the multibeam receiver you guys made to map HI in the galaxy. the HI survey will take about five years. we begin in 12 hours. best wishes from arecibo, dan The Rio Scale to which Dan refers is a one-to-ten tool SETI scientists use for quantifying the importance of a candidate detection. For details, see http://www.setileague.org/iaaseti/rioscale.htm Sorry this one wasn't The Signal, but as you can see from Dan's last comment, that won't stop us from continuing the search! Yours for SETI success, Paul -- H. Paul Shuch, Ph.D. Executive Director, The SETI League, Inc. 433 Liberty Street, PO Box 555, Little Ferry NJ 07643 USA voice (201) 641-1770; fax (201) 641-1771; URL http://www.setileague.org email work: ; home: "We Know We're Not Alone!" ======================================= Bruno Moretti member TeamSETI of SETI Institute http://www.seti.org/ SETI ITALIA Team G. Cocconi http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/team...p?teamid=30233 http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/s...team_7422.html |
#7
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Hi Bruno,
Thank you very much for posting this letter. I appreciate that, since Werthimer himself apparently did not think that the sci.astro.seti newsgroup was worth posting a message on about this so far 'most promising' signal since the start of the project that detected it. Now, I trust that Dr. Werthimer is telling the truth that this 'signal' is nothing more than noise. But I feel that it is at least unthoughtful that he seems to be the only one with enough information to draw that conclusion. In a previous posting, I vented my frustration in 5 reasons, that besides the news postings available to anyone, there is no technical information available about this signal (and its repetitions). No info on what it's start frequency is, its drift rate, its duration, its bandwidth, its strength, and how close its repetitions matched the original pattern, how much time elapsed between the repetitions, how strongly repetitions were correlated, how often we did not find any signal in that part of the sky, and not even info on when and where in the sky the signals were detected (a basic piece of info displayed on every WU in seti@home). At the very least, we, as active seti@home crunchers, as seti enthousiasts, and also just as curious people, should at least be allowed to form our own opinion about this signal and its repetitions. At the very least, we need the applicable work-units to become available to the public. So we can listen to, or analyse ourselves, the noise that Werthimer so profoundly believes is the only thing there. You seem to be more directly involved in the close circles of the seti community, so I call upon you to use your influence to open up the work units and any other info which is/was available (to Werthimer), and convince everybody in that way, that we still did not detect "The Signal". I think that everyone active on seti@home deserves at least full openness after years and years of cranking work units. Thanks Rob "SETI ITALIA Bruno IK2WQA" wrote in message m... from Dan Werthimer in Arecibo to SETI League Da: "Dr. H. Paul Shuch" Inviato: Venerd́ 03/09/2004 00:41:07 -0400 A: "Dr. H. Paul Shuch" Cc: Oggetto: SETI public: False SETI@home alarm, courtesy of the press SETIzens, Today, I've received nearly a hundred emails about a three-time SETI@home hit, reported in today's New Scientist. Sorry to throw a wet blanket on this otherwise exciting announcement, but I have to tell you the press attaches more significance to this observation than do the astronomers themselves. Here is the text of an email received today from SETI@home director Dan Werthimer of U.C. Berkeley (and now in Arecibo): it's a zero on the rio scale. none of our candidates are very interesting - they are all consisitent with noise. we will continue to observe many of the candidates over the next few years, but there's nothing on the candidate lists we are particularly excited about. a reporter from new scientist read the seti@home web pages: in particular there's a section on "candidate signals" where we discuss how we score signals and we show the data from the 220 candidates we re-observed at arecibo 1.5 years ago. these web pages are old, but the reporter made an exciting story about them, by exagerating their content and mis-quoting us and quoting us out of context, and making a press release about one of the candidates that has a bit higher score than the others. i talked to a couple of reporters today, explaining we've seen stuff like this for the last 30 years, and it's always turned out to be rfi or noise, and that there's nothing to get excited about, and that when you look at 50 trillion bytes of data, occasionally you'll find patterns that look unusual just from noise... i wish we had something in our data to get excited about. tomorrow we'll start using the multibeam receiver you guys made to map HI in the galaxy. the HI survey will take about five years. we begin in 12 hours. best wishes from arecibo, dan The Rio Scale to which Dan refers is a one-to-ten tool SETI scientists use for quantifying the importance of a candidate detection. For details, see http://www.setileague.org/iaaseti/rioscale.htm Sorry this one wasn't The Signal, but as you can see from Dan's last comment, that won't stop us from continuing the search! Yours for SETI success, Paul -- H. Paul Shuch, Ph.D. Executive Director, The SETI League, Inc. 433 Liberty Street, PO Box 555, Little Ferry NJ 07643 USA voice (201) 641-1770; fax (201) 641-1771; URL http://www.setileague.org email work: ; home: "We Know We're Not Alone!" ======================================= Bruno Moretti member TeamSETI of SETI Institute http://www.seti.org/ SETI ITALIA Team G. Cocconi http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/team...p?teamid=30233 http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/s...team_7422.html |
#8
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Rob Dekker wrote:
Hi Bruno, Thank you very much for posting this letter. I appreciate that, since Werthimer himself apparently did not think that [...] Rob, Learn to cross-post or just don't cross-post. Already answered in alt.sci.seti. Followups there please. Regards, Martin -- ---------- OS? What's that?! - Martin - To most people, "Operating System" is unknown & strange. - 53N 1W - Mandrake 10.0.1 GNU Linux ---------- http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en-gb/concept.php3 |
#9
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"Martin 53N 1W" wrote in message ... Rob Dekker wrote: Hi Bruno, Thank you very much for posting this letter. I appreciate that, since Werthimer himself apparently did not think that [...] Rob, Learn to cross-post or just don't cross-post. Already answered in alt.sci.seti. Followups there please. My "news.la.sbcglobal.net" server doesn't seem to carry "alt.sci.seti" ... (a gazillion other "alt." stuff but not "alt.sci.xxxxxx") rats! Regards, Martin -- ---------- OS? What's that?! - Martin - To most people, "Operating System" is unknown & strange. - 53N 1W - Mandrake 10.0.1 GNU Linux ---------- http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en-gb/concept.php3 |
#10
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Alfred A. Aburto Jr. wrote:
[...] Learn to cross-post or just don't cross-post. Already answered in alt.sci.seti. Followups there please. My "news.la.sbcglobal.net" server doesn't seem to carry "alt.sci.seti" ... (a gazillion other "alt." stuff but not "alt.sci.xxxxxx") rats! [...] What?! No alt.sci.seti??? Put in a request to your ISP. Or try out Google groups. There's also various news servers open for access from the rest of the world. Regards, Martin -- ---------- OS? What's that?! - Martin - To most people, "Operating System" is unknown & strange. - 53N 1W - Mandrake 10.0.1 GNU Linux ---------- http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en-gb/concept.php3 |
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