Radio Bursts Traced to Faraway Galaxy, but Caller Is Probably ‘Ordinary Physics’ | Hacker News Reader

Radio Bursts Traced to Faraway Galaxy, but Caller Is Probably ‘Ordinary Physics’

nytimes.com

56 pointsdnetesn25 comments

Much better article: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2117098-cosmic-radio-bu...

"Ordinary" in the sense bursts strong enough to vaporize every living being within a good couple dozen light years from the source can be called "ordinary"

For the universe, it's probably mundane.

"We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far."

Everyone secretly wants to discover life or at least interdimensional gateways. Natural phenomena are awesome but they just can't deliver that existential thrill given the number we have catalogued already. The size of your audience is inversely correlated with the complexity of the explanation required for people to grasp the significance of your discovery.

Make a discovery like this, and if you're very lucky you might be the subject of a biography or biopic dramatizing your valuable discovery. If you found actual aliens or gateways to other dimensions then you'd be a legend, have whole countries or planets named after you (if it all works out great) or be the worst villain in history if everything goes pear-shaped. Either way, your legacy is assured.

I hate to be the guy who discovered the aliens that conquered and enslaved our planet. And you know if there are aliens and they are out there looking for stuff, then they are likely not benevolent and even if they are benevolent there is no telling how their interests align with ours, for instance A Small Talent for War:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbT1fCHOjfI

What use would aliens who can conquer planets have for slaves?

The good thing is that, if you become history's worst villain, it's most likely history will not last much longer.

Well one reason could be that it's cheaper than producing 7 billion robots. You know economic reasons. Not because they can't do it, it's just not cost effective. It's much cheaper going to a planet and taking all of its population to work your asteroid mines in that solar system. Often we do things not because we are not capable of alternatives, but it's cheaper. So would the aliens.

Or it could be as trivial as they enjoy eating meat, and this is a a good meat planet. It's cheaper than farming. You just go from planet to planet for meat. Replenish your world ship's freezers by harvesting the planet. Possibilities are infinite, or at least similar to the size of the universe itself.

Dude, i said the person who discovered alien life, not invited it over to have us for pizza. I'm fine with peeking at them from behind that planet until they've made their intention clear.

That's messed up about Halley's Comet.

  > a freak bit of random radio noise

Exactly what an encrypted signal would look like. It's all too likely that it is just noise, but the only time you'd expect non-noise from a signal is when aliens are broadcasting a public message to the universe.

If it's a public message why would it be encrypted?

Because the civilization invented asymmetric cryptography before it invented sliced bread?

I think you missed the part where random radio noise is indistinguishable from encrypted communication, so you should expect non-noise (aka unencrypted) only in the case of a public message.

A message which perfectly uses the radio channel capacity (ie. is very close to the shannon limit) is also indistinguishable from noise to those who don't know how to decode it.

Such a signal, we would never "guess" how to decode it, since if one could guess and check, then that in itself is wasted capacity, and therefore not at the shannon limit.

May be of interest: http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-2998

What the heck did I just read? Lovecraft would be proud.

How old would the radio signal be by the time it reaches us?

Edit: the answer was more obvious than I assumed :p, looks like our earliest AM/FM radio broadcast 110yrs on it's way leaving the milky way http://www.lightyear.fm/

Surprisingly this is an ambiguous question to answer due to the nature of the expanding universe, but if the statement is that "the origin is 2.5 billion light years away" it was _probably_ transmitted 2.5 billion years ago.

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/about-us/104-the-universe/c...

Interesting. Looks like it was around the time the earth's atmosphere was just beginning to populate with Oxygen. But not before there was life n earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event

110yrs ago is only leaving the milky way

No, not even close. The milky way is 100,000 light years across.

Here's a graphic of the milky way with a dot that's 200 light years across (100 light years in each direction from earth.. how far our radio waves have gone).

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2012/3390.ht...

While the edges of the Milky Way are not well defined, the solar system is about 25,000 light years from the center and 25,000 from the edge of the disk. The disk is about 1000 light years thick where the solar system resides[1]. Not sure where the Earth is relative to the Milky Way ecliptic, but odds are it is near it and that our radio broadcasts won't be leaving the Milky Way any time soon.

[1]http://www.universetoday.com/65601/where-is-earth-in-the-mil...

Waves broadcast at the beginning of 2013 would only reach 4LY out. For a radio signal to travel 2.5 billion light years it would need to have travelled for 2.5 billion years since radio waves travel at the speed of light.

Radio broadcasts are subject to the inverse square law. They will be buried in noise long before they reach any distant civilization.

Not to someone with a big enough receive dish antenna.

The free space path loss from Earth to Alpha Centauri (4.4 ly) is ~300 dB at 1 MHz (AM broadcast) and ~345 dB at 100 MHz (FM broadcast). Without directional antennas on both ends of the link (and remember, this is broadcast we're talking about), the situation is hopeless.

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