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Comment by WJW | Hacker News Reader

From a Jupiter-like gas giant type exoplanet, which generate radio emissions through entirely natural processes just like the gas giants in our own solar system.

The title is a tad more spectacular than the actual discovery.

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The title is in an odd spot where, on the face, it is completely anodyne, and not at all misleading or “clickbait.” Yet even sensible readers (like me!) see “radio” and “exoplanet” in the same sentence and think “ALIENS!”

Very awkward spot for the science PR people writing this. It’s almost like it needs extra words to prevent people from adding

“Possible (But Definitely Non-Alien) Radio Emission From Exoplanet (Which Cannot Support Life) Detected”

"Natural Radio Emission" seems to clarify things just fine.

If that's a Natural Radio Emission, then what's a Nocturnal Transmission then?

Why the downvotes - it's an obvious reference to Charlie Farquharson's commentary on the moon missions. :-)

It’s a radio emission, not a radio transmission. That’s a key distinction that may be lost on a lay reader (or anyone not paying enough attention).

Astronomers, amateur astronomers, and astronomy enthusiasts all tend to be aware of the fact that radio is just another part of the spectrum we can use to look at the universe. It’s a strange quirk of our culture that the word radio carries connotations of technology and thus connotes intelligence.

> It’s a strange quirk of our culture that the word radio carries connotations of technology and thus connotes intelligence.

Counterpoint: "radio wave fart from exoplanet detected". No connotation of intelligence IMO

Though, perhaps, of biology.

Not quite as whack as the rash of headlines a while back referring to FRB as 'mysterious radio signals' from 'deep space'.

> anodyne

It's pretty rare for me to run into a (non-technical, niche) word I'm not at least somewhat familiar with, thanks!

anodyne (adjective): not likely to provoke dissent or offense; inoffensive, often deliberately so.

You're obviously not an Uncle Tupelo fan:

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

I used that a couple of weeks ago responding to a bland email from my state’s DOT completely ignoring the concerns I raised.

Possible is a sneaky word to use here, implying unbelievability.

First Exoplanet Detected by Naturally Occurring Radio Emission

Occasionally I'll see an headline making a marvelous claim about 'Gravity Waves'... something like 'shrimp synchronize reproduction to gravity waves'. I always read it as gravitational waves, and for a split second I think there was some revolutionary physics discovery. Of course, they're simply talking about waves driven by gravity... or, in other words, everyday normal waves in water and air.

The same thing happens all the time with pulsars. "Astronomers detect radio signal in space" and don't mention that the signal's frequency is similar to a pulsar

That's funny because as an astronomer the title is both very exciting and completely fair. We've known about long-wavelength radio emission from Jupiter for ages. Astronomers have been looking for the same thing in exoplanet systems probably since shortly after their discovery! But because they are so far away, the emission is faint and hard to detect. This is also very long wavelength radio (in the tens of megahertz) which is a difficult portion of the spectrum to work in.

I suppose it is less spectacular if one makes the immediate connection "radio <-> techno-signature", but that's unwarranted and not a fault of the press release or the author, in my opinion. Jupiter's auroral emissions are mainly caused by volcano's on Io, so it's not unrealistic to think we can learn a lot about planetary mass objects (the moons) from observations like these.

This comment left me wondering: What's the astronomy equivalent of “in mice”?

Gotta be something like "(but it's probably not aliens)", right?

Could you use "non-biogenic" (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/biogenic) for a thing like radio emissions?

That still suggests a _machine race_ could have sent it.

We could define intelligent life as being any of a sapient species, regardless of physical composition. That's helps do away with only carbon-based lifeforms.

What would be the definition of sapience for a machine civilization?

Same as for humans. Or a hive mind, or some other type.

Which is?

Common dictionaries, such as Oxford, state:

Sapient 1. Wise, or attempting to appear wise. 2. Relating to the human species.

Where

1. wise is defined: Having or showing experience, knowledge, and good judgement. Hard to see how that would apply to a hypothetical hive or machine drone civilization with only a single ‘wise’ controller.

2. Clearly not applicable.

Sentience might be a better word.

Why wouldn't 1 work? Basically it's a species that is at least as intelligent as us and can carry out civilization, including scientific and technological progress. It may or may not be sentient as well, see Blindsight for example.

Perhaps "naturally occurring" would be more clear to the layman. Until proven otherwise.

"alien world"

> Scientists think they've detected radio emissions from an alien world

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/news/scientists-thin...

> This alien world could help us find Planet Nine in our own solar system

https://www.popsci.com/story/science/alien-planet-nine/

I'd be happy with "by mice".

Came into the comment section expecting a cold shower. Was not disappointed.

Nothing like the comment section to snap you back to reality.

I suppose... but often the top comment is wrong or mis-leading in some way: "the middle-brow dismissal" HN is famous for. I usually find the most enlightening commentary on HN a few replies down from the top comment where a true expert chimes in to show why the middle-brow dismissal is in fact incorrect and adds their own nuance to the conversation.

> "the middle-brow dismissal" HN is famous for.

Famous amongst what group?

The site guidelines and @dang suggest "shallow dismissal" is now the preferred term. Paul Graham, cofounder of YC explains in a comment, back when he still posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4693920

I guess significance here is that if we can isolate radio signals from naturally-emitting planet, we potentially can isolate radio signals from artificially-emitting planet.

I was going to reply that it might be difficult to match the power of something like Jupiter's radio signals. However, it turns out that Jupiter's decametric radio emissions are only about the equivalent of a megawatt antenna[1]. The US air force already has a radar with a peak power of 32 megawatts[2]. So with sufficient motivation, in principle we or an alien civilization could certainly send regular signals like that.

[1] https://www.space.com/26419-jupiter-radio-waves-alien-life.h...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eglin_AFB_Site_C-6

Not only could we send those kinds of signals, we already have done it using the Arecibo Telescope (RIP), which h̶a̶s̶ had EIRPs ranging from 200 megawatts to 22,000,000 megawatts depending on the transmission frequency. In 1974, we beamed a short message to the Messier 13 globular cluster with a transmission power of just under half a megawatt.

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

Converting the output of a narrow-beam transmitter to EIRP for comparison with radiation sources in the universe makes the assumption that the user of the transmitter knows where to point it.

yes, what is novel here is that the exoplanet was detected using radio (in other words the discovery of the planet is what is significant, not the signal)

I'd like to suggest that "suggesting" is a better word here.

Actually I read the title exactly as what the article described. In fact I wasn't going to read it at all -- "meh" -- until I realized there was a small chance that it might be about something interesting rather than natural.

Comments like these are why I mostly only read the comments and headline.

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