Astronomers in China Claim Possible Detection of Extraterrestrial Civilizations | Hacker News Reader

Astronomers in China Claim Possible Detection of Extraterrestrial Civilizations

livescience.com

47 pointsaxismundi41 comments

Man, I'm tired of clickbait headlines and the whole news industry in general. I think I'm getting old.

This hasn't been confirmed by anyone else yet. The most likely explanation is that it's radio interference from ourselves. Last time people got excited about this it was satellites, another time it was a microwave oven.

They have tourists at this location in China, to try and make some extra money. The tourists aren't allowed to bring their cellphones - how well do you suppose that's enforced?

Thanks for saving me the click.

Enforcement goes about this well https://twitter.com/WhatDaMath/status/1537160689068175360

Agreed, but the problem is that this mindset is the same mindset that allows people to disagree with news, expert, science so that they can believe what they want.

>Similarly, another famous set of signals once supposed to have come from aliens, detected between 2011 and 2014, turned out to have actually been made by scientists microwaving their lunches.

This confirms what I've always suspected: microwave ovens are alien technology!

I'm not saying it's microwave ovens...but it's microwave ovens...

Or they are the aliens, they're multiplying, and talking, but no body is listening to them

York Peppermint Patties are actually alien eggs you can hatch in your microwave:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opi9bSSUW7c

It's evil! Don't touch it!

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

> Scientists have yet to rule out human radio interference as the signals' source

I think I'm going to start to collect the missing qualifiers for each branch of science.

  “…in mice” is of course the founding member of medical trials
  “…in condensed matter” is particle physics
  “…may be interference” radio astronomy clearly needs some polish :p

"The possibility that the suspicious signal is some kind of radio interference is also very high"

This was a very honest sentence in this article, in stark contrast to the title.

The currently headline in the report they link to is

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/BtLLCb0GlPxjmhbAz5pUOw

> 搜寻地外文明，“中国天眼”发现可疑信号

Which google translates as

> Searching for extraterrestrial civilization, "China Sky Eye" found suspicious signals

Sounds reasonable.

It's true that it may have been aliens, it's just an extremely low probability.

I’m genuinely curious. I would agree it’s possible that either could be true but how exactly would you even begin to speculate let alone calculate the supposed probability of either possibility?

It was never aliens before, so the prior is very strong

Wouldn’t the probability that the next time it would be aliens increase every time it turns out to not be aliens

Actually it would decrease

Guerrilla marketing for The Dark Forest ?

My understanding of this, is that the signal intensity required to be detectable on earth means that messages would have to be intentionally beamed at earth with ridiculous energies. It seems unlikely that any significant fraction of civilizations would be doing this toward any sufficient fraction of sky.

If we were trying to detect a duplicate civilization to ourselves, (assuming our signals had propagated further than ~100 light years) we're certainly not producing signals of sufficient intensity that we could detect our own signals with the detection equipment we're using.

It also seems like there's likely to be a lot of pressures on a civilization to become more energy efficient for a long time before progressing to expensive technologies like dyson spheres and whatnot. I still think such things are our best bet for detecting ET civilizations.

Plus, why would an advanced civilization that has already understood the value of energy waste this kind of energy trying to contact us?

- If they are advanced (+civil), then they would have seen a critical development that this became a necessity, rather than preference.

- They may not be civil: not caring what energy they waste. Advanced but not responsible beings.

- They may be doing something for themselves, leaving traces to different directions. We may have stumbled on a construction site. Nothing of value for sending a response. Would you beam a response to reaction site of a supercollider? In case you did, would you get a "message" back? I doubt it.

- Most probably: interference.

Imagine what scientists would think if particle accelerators started receiving small but measurable patternistic statistical deviations in their data they get while the experiments are running only to discover they are evesdropping on some advanced form of interstellar or intergalactic instant quantum communications, only to realize it’s a bunch of alien gamers of different planets talking shit to eachother

I think any species that wanted to send a signal just use probes which last a long time around candidate stars. Eventually, one will get lucky and report back after which if your civilization is still around you can make a decision on a response. Most likely, we'll not be able to detect stray ET signals for a long time until we get serious and make some radio observatories in space for that effort.

> However, the scientists say their findings are preliminary and should be taken with caution until the analysis is complete.

> Tonjie has added that his team is planning to take repeat observations of the strange signals to conclusively rule out any radio interference and obtain as much information about them as possible.

This is being picked up by new outlets but the original source article in the Chinese news was deleted with no explanation.

Most articles being pushed now, including this one, are slow to acknowledge this.

Seems like odd behavior.

> "The possibility that the suspicious signal is some kind of radio interference is also very high, and it needs to be further confirmed or ruled out. This may be a long process," Zhang Tongjie, chief scientist of China ET Civilization Research Group told Science & Technology Daily [0]

Most of the sensational headlines coming from China died after someone actually went back and asked the team if they were sure.

Which was then followed up with:

> "The signals that we found so far are all [radio frequency] interference, they're not from extraterrestrials, they're from terrestrials," Dan Werthimer, a SETI researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who coauthored a preprint paper about the findings, told Futurism. [1]

[0] https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/BtLLCb0GlPxjmhbAz5pUOw

[1] https://futurism.com/fast-signal-not-aliens-scientist

I'm normally pretty open minded about alien detection. I expect there to be many out there - but this is premature. I don't believe they have even re-observed the sources. Then they need to publish and the community needs to pull it apart and mull it over for a while. A genuine detection will probably take many years to reach consensus, even if the source is beaming out prime numbers.

Spoiler: it's never aliens.

Ok spacetime, that's enough out of you.

Let the aliens microwave their alien ramen in peace!

Does the message say "Do not respond, or the inhabitants of my planet will destroy you"?

No, it says:

"Congratulations! This message will help you power your civilization for millions of years! Step one: send 1000kg of plutonium to the solar system coordinates on this list. Step two: remove the last solar system coordinate set from this list and add your own solar system to the top. Step three: retransmit this message with as much power as you can generate on the same frequency you received it. Within only a tiny fraction of a galactic year you will receive enough high energy fissile material to generate energy for millions of years!"

"Dear beloved,

I am the daughter of a Martian king who recently was murdered on my hone planet.

In my possession are 200,000,000 US dollars. I will share 40% with you should you lend assistance.

Best wishes, cheisnrheisoebr boo ofk"

I have been trying to reach you about your planets extended warranty.

I'm pretty sure aliens tried to contact me today, although, they said they were from "warranty services".

Is anyone else seeing a countdown anywhere they stare at?

Actually I’ve noticed this strange thing — since Monday all photos taken with my iPhone seem to have some weird digits in them.

"it is not an alien civilization, until it is"

Real journalism is dead. This is a prime example.

This begs the question: has there ever been "real" journalism?

Electronic publication opened the door for easy money in the form of ad revenue for very little effort and risk (compared to print media of old).

Just looking at the categories listed under "space" provides some inside into the quality and expected depth of the site: "Aliens", "Elon Musk", "NASA", "SpaceX", "Astronaut"(sic!), "Mars", and "Planets".

If these are the browsable "categories" under "Space/Physics" of a publication calling itself "LiveScience", you know you're in for a treat.

Outlets like this existed back in the print media days as well and are not reflective of journalism as whole. It's basically the pop-sci version of the yellow press.

clickbait nonsense about aliens now on hackernews. why?

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