More Mysterious Radio Signals Have Been Detected Coming From Outside Our Galaxy

[Megalith]

We have been picking up multiple radio signals that have been coming from the same location in space. I don’t know why scientists are wasting time coming up with hypotheses when it’s obviously aliens.

Currently, the leading hypothesis for the source of the Milky Way's FRB is the cataclysmic collision of two neutron stars, which forms a black hole. The idea is that as this collision happens, huge amounts of short-lived radio energy are blasted out into space. But the repeating nature of these distant signals, all coming from the same place, suggest that can't be the case - at least for these particular FRB. Instead, the 17 radio bursts detected from FRB 121102 indicate that something less dramatic is going on - the most likely hypothesis at the moment for these outer-galactic FRB is that they're coming from an exotic object such as a young neutron star, that's rotating with enough power to regularly emit the extremely bright pulses.

 

[Brackle]

in before hair guy pic that says aliens!

 

[gxp500]

 

[blkt]

 

[pxc]

 

[blkt]

 

[Exavior]

It is just star lord playing his mix tape too loud

 

[DukenukemX]

The question is, are they broadcasting porn?

 

[Galvin]

Alien porn may be scary

 

[Hagrid]

Alien porn may be scary

Unless they are like this.

 

[Syntax_Error]

According to the linked article, these signals are powerful enough to produce in milliseconds the energy that our sun produces in an entire day. Highly unlikely that E.T.'s first radio signal would be that powerful.

 

[SighTurtle]

could be the microwave

 

[mnewxcv]

According to the linked article, these signals are powerful enough to produce in milliseconds the energy that our sun produces in an entire day. Highly unlikely that E.T.'s first radio signal would be that powerful.

Aliens don't use radio signals for Communication.

 

[Nobified[H]]

According to the linked article, these signals are powerful enough to produce in milliseconds the energy that our sun produces in an entire day. Highly unlikely that E.T.'s first radio signal would be that powerful.

You better be careful, it could be our maker ready to rumble!

 

[Master_shake_]

Help me Obi Wan you're my only hope.

 

[DeathFromBelow]

According to the linked article, these signals are powerful enough to produce in milliseconds the energy that our sun produces in an entire day. Highly unlikely that E.T.'s first radio signal would be that powerful.

Why? How would you know? The universe is 13 billion years old, it's entirely possible that somebody out there is advanced enough to manipulate stellar activity to create radio beacons that are visible across their galaxy.

IIRC the aliens in Contact used something like this to make contact with emerging civilizations.

 

[Chebsy]

It's only the warp drive signatures from distant alien starship ;-)

 

[niconx]

Came here to say aliens don't use crappy radio waves, someone already said it. Someone should tell the guys who think they are going to hear something.

PS. They also don't use rockets.

 

[DeathFromBelow]

Came here to say aliens don't use crappy radio waves, someone already said it. Someone should tell the guys who think they are going to hear something.

PS. They also don't use rockets.

How do you know that? Even if they didn't use radio in favor of lasers or something exotic outside our current scientific experience they would still know about radio as a means of communicating with emerging civilizations. All civilizations that are physically even remotely like us are bound to discover the electromagnetic spectrum.

 

[ChadD]

Why? How would you know? The universe is 13 billion years old, it's entirely possible that somebody out there is advanced enough to manipulate stellar activity to create radio beacons that are visible across their galaxy.

IIRC the aliens in Contact used something like this to make contact with emerging civilizations.

This single is interesting and likely natural. Still... if a civilization gets to the point of having radio as we have. I believe radio wave communication would be a short lived tech with a very small window of time where they (or we) would be using strong radio waves. As the tech matures the strength of the single heads down until the tech is replaced completely. Its possible that with in a 100 or so years of discovering radio most Civs move on to better more efficient methods of communication. So I could see an advanced Civ seeing powerful radio bursts long after they stopped using the tech as a possible way to make contact with species still perhaps using radio, or if we are going to go independence day on this one... Civs that are easily conquered as they haven't moved on to quantum communication or the like with defenses to match. lol

 

[Syntax_Error]

Why? How would you know? The universe is 13 billion years old, it's entirely possible that somebody out there is advanced enough to manipulate stellar activity to create radio beacons that are visible across their galaxy.

IIRC the aliens in Contact used something like this to make contact with emerging civilizations.

FIRST SIGNAL, didn't you read? I specifically said first signal. You are saying that these hypothetical aliens got so advanced over night? Like one day they were cave dwellers and the next day they had warp engines?

Secondly movies aren't real, just so you know, and sci-fi, especially modern sci-fi should not be confused with real science.

Thirdly, using "Contact" of all things, as an example of anything even remotely science-related, automatically renders your science-related arguments void pretty much ad infinitum. Sorry.

 

[DeathFromBelow]

FIRST SIGNAL, didn't you read? I specifically said first signal. You are saying that these hypothetical aliens got so advanced over night? Like one day they were cave dwellers and the next day they had warp engines?

Yes I did read, and that doesn't follow... you said they 'don't use crappy radio waves,' implying advanced aliens who have discovered something better than radio.

Why does it matter if it's their first signal from this beacon, the first that happened to be pointed at us, or just the first we've happened to notice? Whats the problem with what I said? We're talking about advanced aliens building radio beacons.

It's most likely natural, but it's fun and interesting to speculate.

Secondly movies aren't real, just so you know, and sci-fi, especially modern sci-fi should not be confused with real science.

No shit, I just thought it was fun that Sagan's novel discusses a sort of powerful radio beacon that might look just like this.

 

[Uvaman2]

If you want to communicate across the universe you need power, and maybe hence simplicity?

 

[Stiler]

FIRST SIGNAL, didn't you read? I specifically said first signal. You are saying that these hypothetical aliens got so advanced over night? Like one day they were cave dwellers and the next day they had warp engines?

Secondly movies aren't real, just so you know, and sci-fi, especially modern sci-fi should not be confused with real science.

Thirdly, using "Contact" of all things, as an example of anything even remotely science-related, automatically renders your science-related arguments void pretty much ad infinitum. Sorry.

Umm, what? Contact is one of the few movies that literally goes out of its way to try and be as accurate as possible, some errors? yes, but as a whole it's faaaaar more accurate compared to most other sci-fi movies in terms of the science behind it.


Unless you think Carl Sagan was an idiot and didn't know what he was doing.

 

[Syntax_Error]

Yes I did read, and that doesn't follow... you said they 'don't use crappy radio waves,'

Err, no, "niconx" up there said that. See?

 

[ChadD]

FIRST SIGNAL, didn't you read? I specifically said first signal. You are saying that these hypothetical aliens got so advanced over night? Like one day they were cave dwellers and the next day they had warp engines?

Secondly movies aren't real, just so you know, and sci-fi, especially modern sci-fi should not be confused with real science.

Thirdly, using "Contact" of all things, as an example of anything even remotely science-related, automatically renders your science-related arguments void pretty much ad infinitum. Sorry.

Any signals we detect will likely be lighthouse type signals turned on years after a Civ outgrows Radio. It is already happening to us our signals get weaker and weaker every year as our tech advances. At some point we will discover something that is likely far better. Things like Quantum communication may be a crazy pipe dream that is simply not possible... or it may turn out that 30-40 years from now we all have instant communication over unlimited distance and our civ will be quite. Perhaps at that point or 40-50 years after that people may decide to build a powerful beacon style radio. Sure this signal isn't likely that... still that its not impossible. Also as others have said using a story written by Carl Sagan isn't the same as pointing to something written by L Ron Hubbard or something. Sagan was a world renowned astronomer and with Contact he was speculating sure but he was speculating about what was actually possible with in the bounds of science.

 

[DeathFromBelow]

Err, no

Same thing, I saw that instead of your bit about 'warp drives.' Your post still doesn't make any sense in this discussion.

Why are you going off on a tangent yelling about a 'first signal' from primitive civilizations? We're talking about the possibility of advanced aliens building radio beacons.

 

[michalrz]

*exhales*
Guys... Guys... What if it's Carrie Fisher?

 

[Dekoth-E-]

I concluded long ago that earth is most likely the "Alabama" of the universe. Advanced races pop in sometimes to observe the entertainment, but otherwise try to avoid association.

 

[lilbabycat]

We're trapped in our solar system and in hundreds of years we'll still be trapped here. Hundreds of years after that we'll figure out a way to communicate with intelligent life a few solar systems over, only to discover they're trapped too. Billions of islands of trapped little nothings, no where to go.

Unless we figure out a way to do XYZ completely theory like fold space / open worm hole / travel FTL; basically all things that might not be possible, ever.

 

[ICOM]

 

[Ducman69]

Some alien is getting fired for that mistake.

Contrary to popular belief, there are actually dozens of other nearby alien civilizations, but they checked in on us and want nothing to do with those f'd up Earthlings so have committed to going radio silent... well, that is until Arqn'lop'derk accidentally aimed the dish at Earth for a minute.

 

[leSLIe]

Definitely illegal aliens.

 

[Stiler]

We're trapped in our solar system and in hundreds of years we'll still be trapped here. Hundreds of years after that we'll figure out a way to communicate with intelligent life a few solar systems over, only to discover they're trapped too. Billions of islands of trapped little nothings, no where to go.

Unless we figure out a way to do XYZ completely theory like fold space / open worm hole / travel FTL; basically all things that might not be possible, ever.

Theoretically we really only need 4 major things to happen.

1. Lightspeed travel
2. Infinite renewable source of power (IE being able to harvest the suns powers at a 1:1 ratio or better)
3. Renewable source of Oxygen/water/food.
4. Renewable source of building materials (IE to build things as needed for repairs or colonies), think of a 3d printer that doesn't run out of the material it needs to print/build with).

We do not need wormholes or FTL, I mean that'd be nice, but it's not absolutely needed.

It simply would take us a long time to do things without it, but it'd be possible.

We could basically build multiple ships and have them each go to the closest habitable planets that we know of, and then build there and expand further and further over the years. It'd take long, I mean 50 years aboard a space ship, with new gienerations of humans having to learn about the mission and being trained on it, etc.

 

[DeathFromBelow]

Theoretically we really only need 4 major things to happen.

1. Lightspeed travel
2. Infinite renewable source of power (IE being able to harvest the suns powers at a 1:1 ratio or better)
3. Renewable source of Oxygen/water/food.
4. Renewable source of building materials (IE to build things as needed for repairs or colonies), think of a 3d printer that doesn't run out of the material it needs to print/build with).

We do not need wormholes or FTL, I mean that'd be nice, but it's not absolutely needed.

It simply would take us a long time to do things without it, but it'd be possible.

We could basically build multiple ships and have them each go to the closest habitable planets that we know of, and then build there and expand further and further over the years. It'd take long, I mean 50 years aboard a space ship, with new gienerations of humans having to learn about the mission and being trained on it, etc.

This has been speculated about for some time. Nuclear pulse propulsion (basically, detonating nukes against a pusher plate) was seriously considered and developed back in the early days of the space program. An interstellar Orion spacecraft could achieve something on the order of 1/10 light speed, enabling hops from star to star within a human lifetime. An exponentially growing fleet of such ships could colonize every star in the Milky Way galaxy in 1 million years.

It seems reasonable to me that we might be able to build that sort of thing in another century or two. The concept has been refined and improved since then. Project Daedalus and it's successors utilize laser induced fusion pulses instead of nukes.

 

[Stiler]

We don't need any of those things to


This has been speculated about for some time. Nuclear pulse propulsion (basically, detonating nukes against a pusher plate) was seriously considered and developed back in the early days of the space program. An interstellar Orion spacecraft could achieve something on the order of 1/10 light speed, enabling hops from star to star within a human lifetime. An exponentially growing fleet of such ships could colonize every star in the Milky Way galaxy in 1 million years.

It seems reasonable to me that we might be able to build that sort of thing in another century or two. The concept has been refined and improved since then. Project Daedalus and it's successors utilize laser induced fusion pulses instead of nukes.

What do you mean we don't need any of those?

How do you expect to have long term space travel (IE 50'ish ore more years traveling on a ship) without having some type of energy/food/water source?

Oxygen currently is made from water, the ISS gets water delivered to it to make oxygen as well as it being recycled from water vapor, etc. So we definitely would need something to provide us with water/oxygen that we don't have the technology for yet. Also a closed ecosystem might work, using things like algae and high oxygen producing plants to provide oxygen. We are still learning good ways for this long-term though.

Water would be the main thing after that, and packing water for 50+ years would take a huge amount of space, not simply accounting for the human consumption but also water needed for the plants, etc. So finding a way to have a good long-term supply of water without having a huge tank tacked onto the spacecraft would be great. The ISS actually recovers water from waste (IE Feces/urine) which would help save some space, but it currently isn't good enough for long-term space travel.

Then you have the need for food, a way to grow food/replinish it without taking up huge spaces is absolutely needed, that's why they are working on growing things from seeds and other very tiny things that astronauts can grow/eat as they travel.

As far as building materials , we surely would need them. Imagine going all that way and something breaks down or a part gets destroyed somehow. You only have finite resources and the planet you get to might not have what you need, or the machinery you took to extract those resources/refine them tears up, you'd be up the creek without a paddle. We'd need to make sure we have the tools and materials we need to start a colony and get things underway to harvest new resources/build the things we need to long-term survival, repair the ships if need be, etc.

 

[nightfly]

Definitely illegal aliens.

Yup. Aliens that defy the laws of physics as we know them.

Until another genius comes along who develops science to fundamentally change what is currently thought of as impossible, we're not advancing, and we're not going anywhere outside the solar system. It would simply take too long. In the time it would take to go to the next star, we will have advanced enough to get there faster. Consider how long it took to get from NYC to Tokyo in 1916, vs how long it takes today. The next advance in science will make that difference seem miniscule.

Like the old saying goes, the best proof that there are intelligent civilizations in outer space is that none of them want to contact us.

We are not a civilization. We are not civilized. We are not advanced. We kill each other on a grand scale, there are wars going on constantly at national levels, and tribal attacks at lower levels every day. The most powerful people on our planet are the evilest, most barbaric, and most dishonest of the species. No one would want anything to do with us.

 

[michalrz]

This is what they know about us:

 

[DeathFromBelow]

What do you mean we don't need any of those?

How do you expect to have long term space travel (IE 50'ish ore more years traveling on a ship) without having some type of energy/food/water source?

That was the result of me trying to post from my phone, but what I meant was you don't need 'infinite' renewable sources of power/water, just as you don't necessarily have to be able to achieve relativistic velocities. To get to Proxima Centauri with an Orion-type starship you'd need ~40 years worth of supplies. I think that's an engineering problem that may very well be practical in the next 2 or 3 centuries. They'd probably build the ship into an ice asteroid and use it for fuel/water/shielding during the voyage.

 

[westrock2000]

Thirdly, using "Contact" of all things, as an example of anything even remotely science-related, automatically renders your science-related arguments void pretty much ad infinitum. Sorry.

Haha. Please, point us to an accurate description of how alien contact will unfold.

Additionally, the movie and the book are quite different, so which one are you referring to? Both?

Aliens don't use radio signals? WTF are we?