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Phys.org is reporting on a paper which details some interesting phenomena which could be evidence of advanced civilizations.
From the Phys.org article:
We all want there to be aliens. Green ones, pink ones, brown ones, Greys. Or maybe Vulcans, Klingons, even a being of pure energy. Any type will do.
That's why whenever a mysterious signal or energetic fluctuation arrives from somewhere in the cosmos and hits one of our many telescopes, headlines erupt across the media: "Have We Finally Detected An Alien Signal?" or "Have Astronomers Discovered An Alien Megastructure?" But science-minded people know that we're probably getting ahead of ourselves.
[...] What we're talking about here is a new study from E.F. Borra and E. Trottier, two astronomers at Laval University in Canada. Their study, titled "Discovery of peculiar periodic spectral modulations in a small fraction of solar type stars" was just published at arXiv.org. ArXiv.org is a pre-print website, so the paper itself hasn't been peer reviewed yet. But it is generating interest.
The two astronomers used data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and analyzed the spectra of 2.5 million stars. Of all those stars, they found 234 stars that are producing a puzzling signal. That's only a tiny percentage. And, they say, these signals "have exactly the shape of an ETI signal" that was predicted in a previous study by Borra.
Prediction is a key part of the scientific method. If you develop a theory, your theory looks better and better the more you can use it to correctly predict some future events based on it. Look how many times Einstein's predictions based on Relativity have been proven correct.
The 234 stars in Borra and Trottier's study aren't random. They're "overwhelmingly in the F2 to K1 spectral range" according to the abstract. That's significant because this is a small range centred around the spectrum of our own Sun. And our own Sun is the only one we know of that has an intelligent species living near it. If ours does, maybe others do too?
The authors acknowledge five potential causes of their findings: instrumental and data reduction effects, rotational transitions in molecules, the Fourier transform of spectral lines, rapid pulsations, and finally the ETI signal predicted by Borra (2012). They dismiss molecules or pulsations as causes, and they deem it highly unlikely that the signals are caused by the Fourier analysis itself. This leaves two possible sources for the detected signals. Either they're a result of the Sloan instrument itself and the data reduction, or they are in fact a signal from extra-terrestrial intelligences.
Are these signals just evidence of some, as yet undiscovered, property of stars, or are these "transmissions" the alien equivalent of an episode of "The Bachelor"?
2012 paper predicting the signals reported on by Borra, et. al.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @04:26AM
Assume for a second that it IS proven to be Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. When you wake up tomorrow morning, would you go about your day differently?
I think it would fill me with hope. Hope that the human race could turn away from its selfish and adversarial ways and start living on a higher plane of consciousness, so to speak. It would give humanity a grand goal to shoot for - together. I hope it would make us feel silly for some of the things we waste our time and attention on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @04:56AM
And put down that crack pipe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @05:44AM
Or extreme terror. Some people live afraid, and xenophobia is well known amongst our own species...
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @06:16AM
Trump will build a Yuuuuge Dyson-sphere to keep them out, and make them pay for it in Quatloos.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @07:03AM
It means that the aliens managed to advance to the point where megastructures could be created.
Which probably means that they are ruled over by a tyrannical government/overlord that can keep them from destroying themselves.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday October 25 2016, @09:23AM
Shut up Donald.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jtgd on Tuesday October 25 2016, @09:05AM
Heck, I'd be happy just to know that another intelligent civilization had managed to get this far without annihilating themselves.
(Score: 3, Funny) by darnkitten on Tuesday October 25 2016, @05:13PM
...Surely you mean shoot at?