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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: 5, Interesting) by stormwyrm on Tuesday October 25 2016, @06:28AM
Looking in the electromagnetic spectrum for alien life is probably going about it all wrong [scienceblogs.com]. What we ought to be looking at is the neutrino spectrum. The use of nuclear power generates a very clear, and very specific antineutrino signature that cannot come from any natural source. If you see an antineutrino signature in the energy range above 10 MeV, it is difficult to imagine a natural process that could produce it. Yes, supernova explosions would produce massive and powerful neutrino flux, not an antineutrino flux. The radioactive decay of naturally occurring radioisotopes produces antineutrinos too, but that falls off very rapidly above 6 MeV. In the energy range above 10 MeV, there is no greater source of antineutrinos in the universe than from deliberately built nuclear reactors. Any alien civilisation within about 50 light years or so of Earth that has developed advanced neutrino astronomy will probably notice this when they look at our solar system.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @10:25AM
Just a question, how far would such "signal" travel before it would be undetectable/disappear (due to neutrino collisions or other causes)? (I'm not a sub-atomic particle physicist, so I'm not even sure if this is a dumb question)
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Tuesday October 25 2016, @04:05PM
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @06:08PM
Wouldn't it make more sense for an alien race to send more "dumbed down" messages than limit their outreach to civilizations with advanced neutrino detectors?
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Wednesday October 26 2016, @12:08AM
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 2) by lgw on Wednesday October 26 2016, @01:02AM
The nice thing about neutrinos is that they are subject only to the weak interaction and gravity, and as such they can go a very, very long way indeed and pass through a lot of material before they interact with anything else.
Which makes building an observatory for them a bit difficult. If we could build a directional neutrino detector with a controlled aperture, we could study the CNBR and the secrets of the early universe would be revealed. Not in my lifetime, I think.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @04:25PM
No, it isn't difficult. Just look on earth. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Tuesday October 25 2016, @11:23PM
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @07:51PM
That may be technically true, but we don't know how to build cheap massive-scan neutrino telescopes yet. Maybe if some nice billionaire wrote out a check instead of purchasing a lame ball team. We can promise to name the aliens after them as an incentive: Gatites, Sorosines, Kochians, Buffites, etc. (The aliens might complain, but we won't get their complaint letter until hundreds of years.)