Amateur astronomer Alberto Caballero finds possible source of Wow signal | Hacker News Reader

Amateur astronomer Alberto Caballero finds possible source of Wow signal

phys.org

74 pointsdnetesn51 comments

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I've only read the article and not the research but that's because the article says the argument is simply:

1. The Wow! signal is intelligent in origin.

2. This exoplanet system here is in an area the signal might have come from.

3. It looks a bit like our system so might have intelligent life.

This sounds like more of a moonshot for believers rather than a thoroughly scientific investigation.

I found this article frustrating to read because of the lack of details, explanation, or attempts to educate the reader. Overall, it is just the reporting of speculation and nothing more.

That said, I wonder if this is the type of news source we need. Anyone who wants further details can and should research the topic before drawing conclusions like the pre-baked ones we usually receive from our news sources.

Nah, I feel like “sources or GTFO”. If an article has a source then you can at least evaluate the claims yourself. But if the article is vague and doesn’t cite, then you have to look through science news or journals for things that “look like” they could’ve prompted the article, but you can’t be sure if you’ve found the actual source (which may be more or less substantive than the thing you do find).

>In his[Alberto Caballero] paper uploaded to the arXiv preprint server

That looks like a citation to me. This isn't a defense of the article, which is bad for a variety of reasons. I'm just saying let's stick to what's true, rather than pretending they didn't cite a source just because they didn't have a hyperlink.

The "paper" is here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.06090 but its analysis is not really something that you'd get published in an astronomy journal [speaking as a former professional astronomer]

Very much agree, this is a fishing expedition where you can come to pretty much any conclusion.

1. the regions of sky that the signal might have come from are huge, and contain tons of stars. 2. he's basically just sifting through all the stars in a huge area of space and looking for ones with Sol like parameters.

That's not science, but that said, it doesn't mean we shouldn't have a look and listen at the star if it really is a great candidate.

When Kepler started returning data, so much of it was unexpected that at the very least now we have a star name that if future scientists are looking to compare their data set with other findings, they may see "oh this 2mass star was hypothesized to be the wow signal by a crank, but we just found X there!"

It's tricky of course, because it's hard for a normal person (I am assuming) to tell the difference between some dude who uploads a neat thing to arXiv and someone who stakes their career and livelihood on the science they produce.

Sorry to pry, but what does one do after a professional astronomy career?

You write Scala? (https://tpolecat.github.io)

In my case, I founded a company based on the algorithmic approaches I developed as an academic - www.blackfordanalysis.com

Folks who did their PhDs about the same time as me, and progressed through a couple of postdoc positions, are variously: science teachers, data scientists, product managers, quants, environmental analysts, software engineers, hardware engineers and industrial scientists.

In the UK, fewer than one in ten astronomers who take a first astronomy job post-PhD (usually called a postdoc) progress to a permanent faculty position. Those that do make the journey typically take about a decade and three to four fixed-term positions to get there.

All (two) of the astronomers I know became fat, lazy, well paid engineers with a wife, house and garden, picket fence, doing programming and engineering at a multinational company. Sigh, I had such high hopes.

Trick Soviet hackers into thinking your government lab is doing research on space based weapons.

From the labs I've worked in, I think the Russians would already know you weren't given the security of a lot of researchers' systems, maybe not national labs/NASA, but I even did some work at Goddard Space Flight Center and it was an ancient lab that definitely had live internet Ethernet wires here and there that systems were plugged into doing... stuff.

I did a lot of data processing, and about 1/4 of the year was grant proposals.

It's missing a link. The article directly references a paper, but gives no way to unambiguously locate it. That's not a source, it's an open invitation to research.

To quote the article directly: "Caballero reasoned that if the source was some other life form, it would likely be living on an exoplanet.."

The author does not claim the signal is intelligent.

But then he only found a possible source if the signal is intelligent. He did not find a natural astronomical phenomenon in that system that could be the source.

I think some posters here are missing that Caballero isn't trying to prove anything, they just made a few assumptions (if it was created by intelligent life, then...), looked for something that matched those assumptions, and selected a candidate star system for further consideration. I don't see anywhere that they are claiming this is in any way evidence for the assertion that the Wow! signal originated by intelligent life.

I think part of the issue is that the title is a bit clickbait-y. Sure, it’s technically a correct title, but at first glance it seems much more interesting than it actually is.

How would you fix it? "Astronomer finds an exoplanet which fits exclusion criteria if WOW! Signal is intelligent in origin"?

> How would you fix it? "Astronomer finds an exoplanet which fits exclusion criteria if WOW! Signal is intelligent in origin"?

As far as I can tell there's not even evidence of an exoplanet around that star (likely because that star hasn't been searched for evidence of an exoplanet). The arXiv preprint basically amounts to "Identification of a Sun-like star in the same part of the sky where the 'Wow' signal originated."

> "Identification of a Sun-like star in the same part of the sky where the 'Wow' signal originated."

Even that is clickbaity - it fails to account how likely it was to find such a star in that volume of space.

That would at least offer some analysis of the situation.

> Even that is clickbaity - it fails to account how likely it was to find such a star in that volume of space.

Yeah. I should've been more clear that I was only meaning that as a summary of the article, not as a replacement title.

I would fix it by not printing it at all because it's a click bait title with no substantial underlying story.

Yeah. It is a problem of allocating scarce resources: which exoplanets to study first? How could one answer, except using any probabilistic evidence here is. Anything resistant to explanation by 'mundane' phenomena but might be explained by an phenomenon Caballero is trying to find, is a good probabilistic evidence that could be used to narrow searching space.

I read the paper (1) and it's kind of pointless. There's no actual evidence of anything in this paper. It consists of a database search of stars in the WOW signal direction, finding one that is sort of like the Sun. It is unknown if this star even has any exoplanets. Many comments think there is an exoplanet, so let me emphasize that all that is known to exist is a star.

(1) https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.06090.pdf

Is this information not helpful?

I am completely disgusted by the HN tone of "it's pointless to look at this because there are potential flaws"

The information isn't helpful. If the paper wanted to make a case for this star being a candidate for the signal's origin, the paper should have at least discussed the expected probability of finding such a start in such a volume in the Milky Way.

They found 1. Or 14. Or a lot more, if you relax a constraint that isn't motivated. The "paper" concludes that both candidate volumes() of space should be searched for exoplanets.

() only one "horn" (of 2) received the signal, but they don't know which one. Hence two possible volumes of space where the signal could have originated.

The paper isn't pointless, but it is highly speculative given its assumptions. Makes it feel less like a scientific paper advancing knowledge and more like a tech blog post to me.

I agree it is highly speculative, but anyone who is interested in the topic could make a name for themselves by respectfully qualifying/disproving this theory with a statistical analysis of the probability of this signal coming from the exoplanets in that area, and profiling what a qualifying candidate exoplanet would look like.

Or alternatively just provide the statistics on what the chance is that the signal was errant/natural in cause

"Located in the right part of the sky" ... even one degree of horizon represents a huge area and the researcher admits that there are other targets in the area. I'd argue that the premise that the signal comes from an earth-like planet isn't even scientifically valid. Who says other life-forms are most likely to form on in an earth-like environment? Isn't that currently a sample size of one? Does life need a planet to exist? What if the signal came from an alien interstellar space-craft?

The only way to provide further analysis for this signal is to find it again.

I think there may be a probabilistic argument for some of these points.

While a sample size of one is not much, it's more than none. We know we have life on our planet, so we know it's possible in an earth like environment. So the only evidence we have points to earth like planets being more likely.

The interstellar space craft is of course possible, but since we don't have any ourselves, but we have radio for a while now, it seems more likely that the signal originated from a planet, since the interstellar space craft is much more complex technology for which we don't have evidence yet.

And just three years ago somebody said with the same amount of confidence that it was a comet:

https://phys.org/news/2017-06-wow-mystery-space.html

I think that if a person goes looking hard enough for the answer they want, they'll find it.

At least the comet hypothesis has some actual data to back it up, and the data matches the Wow! data. This current one assumes the signal must be from intelligent life and found a candidate that might possibly have intelligent life that might possibly have caused the Wow! signal, with no explanation for why said (possibly existing) intelligent life has not caused any additional signals since then. At least the comet explanation offers an explanation that fits the facts.

Wouldn't the power at the source of such a signal be so great as to cause harm to nearby life? If the "wow" signal actually originated from 2MASS 19281982-2640123, whatever life that may have been there is now probably gone.

2MASS 19281982-2640123 is 1800 light years away. Eh, maybe if ET has solved war and politics, they're still there. But it also implies WOW was not a response to our RF emissions, which are reaching at most 130 LY out today. This raises other questions. Were they broadcasting to every habitable planet in sight? We did that briefly.

That seems like awfully weak evidence, if you could even call it that.

Judge: Mr. Hutz We’ve been in here for four hours. Do you have any evidence at all?

Hutz: Well, Your Honor. We’ve plenty of hearsay and conjecture. Those are KINDS of evidence.

Simpsons is on Fox isn't it. It all makes sense now.

ITT: people getting mad about a guy's reasoning where he says "well, I looked over there and it might be worth looking deeper into"

This isn't good science.

Caballero went looking for a specific answer- a planet in the right place in the sky, with the right conditions- and found it. Therefore, this is proof the signal came from ET intelligence, right? But in science you should be going the opposite direction- start with the data and see what answer it leads to.

What's more, there's a big region of space the signal could have come from. Saying "any planet in that cone is the answer" isn't fair. There's just as likely to be thousands or millions more planets with equal properties further away inside the same cone.

A more fair experiment would be to say "ignoring the specific direction the 'Wow' signal came from, predict where it should have come from given the data we have"- and then if you find an answer that aligns with the source of the 'Wow', then you're onto something.

True, but he states in the paper:

> In this paper it is analysed which of the thousands of stars in the WOW! Signal region could have the highest chance of being the real source of the signal, providing that it came from a star system similar to ours.

And that hypothesis he answers. So maybe not the best science the hypothesis is stated and a possible answer is given with many 'but if's' attached to it.

pdf: https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.06090

sort of on the same subject, lots of discussion has happened over the year of the few times we've intentionally transmitted signals into space, such as:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message

one thing people don't often think about... We have thousands of sites all around the world that transmit stuff to geostationary satellites all the time. Some of them are quite large and powerful (up to 1200W and 2000W power amplifiers on 11 meter size C-band dishes). When those signals are sent to a geostationary satellite, it's not like the signal stops at the satellite.

If a big earth station dish is aimed at a specific spot in geostationary and tranmits something, 99.999999% of that signal is going past the satellite and off into interstellar space, possibly to eventually be intercepted by aliens.

This is the signal from 1977 they are talking about: http://www.bigear.org/wow20th.htm

The evidence he presented is the very definition of anything is possible.

articles that end too soon...

Cool, let's send someone to check it out.

Wow signal has been pretty conclusively shown to be the reflected spectra of hydrogen out gassing from a comet core. The actual comet in question has been found and similar signals detected. OP didn’t get the memo I guess.

Wikipedia states:

> This hypothesis was dismissed by astronomers, including members of the original Big Ear research team, as the cited comets were not in the beam at the correct time. Furthermore, comets do not emit strongly at the frequencies involved, and there is no explanation for why a comet would be observed in one beam but not in the other

So, not actually conclusively shown at all.

https://phys.org/news/2017-06-wow-mystery-space.html

Someone who spent their entire life defending conjecture is going to find a reason to believe it still holds half a century later. But the evidence against is compelling to those not so invested in the outcome. There are weird aspects of the signal that are perfectly explained by it being hydrogen gas.

Amusingly phys.org has that from June 7, 2017:

https://phys.org/news/2017-06-wow-mystery-space.html

Wow! (No pun intended) That is a serious lack of editorial review for a physics news source. It's basically a retraction of a factual article with speculation.

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