from the but-we-want-our-little-green-men dept.
We thought aliens were making first contact, but it looks like Earth has been caught out by a case of phantom phone vibration on a cosmic scale.
The latest radio signal picked up by SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) had excited some folks, but it turns out the signal came from Earth.
Earlier this week, our SETI senses were tingling over news that Russian scientists had discovered a "strong signal" coming out of a star system 95 light-years away. The signal was reportedly picked up by the Russian RATAN-600 radio telescope more than a year ago, coming from the direction of the star HD 164595.
While news sites around the world started calling Jodi Foster for comment on this real-life "Contact" situation, the rest of us (CNET included) were pretty skeptical. For starters, the Russians reportedly only picked up the signal once in 39 tries, and they'd sat on the seemingly exciting news for a year.
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An international team of scientists from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is investigating mysterious signal spikes emitting from a 6.3-billion-year-old star in the constellation Hercules—95 light years away from Earth. The implications are extraordinary and point to the possibility of a civilization far more advanced than our own.
The unusual signal was originally detected on May 15, 2015, by the Russian Academy of Science-operated RATAN-600 radio telescope in Zelenchukskaya, Russia, but was kept secret from the international community. Interstellar space reporter Paul Gilster broke the story after the researchers quietly circulated a paper announcing the detection of "a strong signal in the direction of HD164595."
The mysterious star's designation is HD164595, and it's considered to be sun-like in nature with a nearly identical metallic composition to our own star. So far, a single Neptune-like (but warmer) planet has been discovered in its orbit—HD 164595 b. But as Gilster explained, "There could, of course, be other planets still undetected in this system."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 01 2016, @10:15PM
Never mind that the facts, let's just hate them anyway.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday September 01 2016, @10:26PM
Pick your headline: "We Dunn Goofed our journalism" vs "The Russians caught lying about the proof of advanced ET communications"
(Score: 1) by MrGuy on Thursday September 01 2016, @10:25PM
It was earth all along.
You finally made a money out of meeeee!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 01 2016, @10:53PM
For reference, you can see it in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlmzUEQxOvA [youtube.com] That particular song starts 1:10 in.
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Thursday September 01 2016, @10:33PM
I could not help but flashback to...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkcGm-pWwsQ [youtube.com] The call is coming from inside the house
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 2) by julian on Thursday September 01 2016, @10:48PM
Then who was phone?
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Friday September 02 2016, @12:49AM
Donald Trumps hair piece of course...
http://trumpdonald.org/ [trumpdonald.org]
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 4, Funny) by ilPapa on Friday September 02 2016, @02:22AM
I think that whatever that thing is, it's far to grand to call it a mere "hairpiece". We're talking tonsorial architecture here. But it's something he gets from his mother's side of the family (TW: hold on to your hats for this photo of Trump's mom)
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CbMi4SGWIAAqORo.jpg [twimg.com]
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 2) by Bogsnoticus on Friday September 02 2016, @06:55AM
Looks like that photo was taken just after someone started playing Slim Whitmans "Indian Love Song", and just before her head exploded.
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 01 2016, @10:53PM
It was just Hillary Clinton with her self hosted phone system that uses satellites to bounce the signal off distant stellar objects. All legitimate State-Department business, Hillary has nothing to hide and there's nothing to see here. She was in no way providing classified information to her lizard progenitors on Nibiru.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday September 01 2016, @11:15PM
Nonono. The lizard people are from Thuban [wikipedia.org], not Nibiru! They have a communications relay on Saturn with a downlink to the moon, but that all doesn't seem very well in the vicinity of the Hercules constellation where HD 164595 can be found. It looks like the moon and Saturn will be in decent alignment around the 8th [earthsky.org], so I'd expect a data burst then.
Everybody make sure to wear turquoise on the 8th!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 01 2016, @11:31PM
Awesome and thanks for sharing. I will build a large antenna into my girlfriends phoenician purple dildo and insert it deep into my anus so that I may receive Hilary's wisdom and adequately prepare for another Clinton presidency and this years Saturnalia.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday September 01 2016, @10:56PM
Keep your terrestrial microwave signals and pulsars to yourself. We want color photographs of exoplanets with atmospheres, liquid water, and vegetation.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday September 01 2016, @11:30PM
At least they caught it before they brought in Jodie Foster.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 02 2016, @12:39AM
The champion for planet Earth should be:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 02 2016, @12:52AM
CowboyNeal, naturally.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 02 2016, @12:58AM
NCommander will be most displeased with your disloyalty!
(Score: 2) by Bogsnoticus on Friday September 02 2016, @06:58AM
Goatse.
Let's see the aliens escape that black hole.
In fact, someone else can watch and see if they escape. I'll be blindfolded as I've already had my monthly quote of brain-bleach.
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
(Score: 2) by Webweasel on Friday September 02 2016, @03:27PM
Not Homer Simpson?
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ilPapa on Friday September 02 2016, @02:17AM
The signal came from Earth because the aliens are here already!
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 02 2016, @06:01AM
So it was terrestrial extraterrestrials.
(Score: 2) by tfried on Friday September 02 2016, @07:35PM
So it was extra terrestrials.
FTFY
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 02 2016, @06:00AM
It wasn't intelligent life, just the military.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by moondrake on Friday September 02 2016, @08:57AM
So what, _exactly_ was the reason to declare it terrestrial?
It seems to me that just some official was annoyed with it entering main stream news.
The signal was picked up over a year ago and during that time, there seems to have been no evidence either way during that time. Then suddenly we get a press release:
(https://www.sao.ru/Doc-en/SciNews/2016/Sotnikova/), that claims without evidence: "Subsequent processing and analysis of the signal revealed its most probable terrestrial origin. ".
But this is highly unlikely if taken literally. It would mean that the signal itself was obviously from earth, but it was just a single energy peak. It did not encode "I am from earth" in Morse or something. It was a frequency that is not uncommon on earth, but as far as I know, no real explanation of origin of the signal was made. And thus it merely means they have no clue what caused that signal or whether or not it is terrestrial in origin.
(Score: 1) by Tara Li on Friday September 02 2016, @01:51PM
Agreed - the article said it was most probably terrestrial in origin, but did not actually cite the terrestrial origin. This is as bad as the people who instantly jumped on the ET option as being the preferred origin. The correct answer for "what was it" is - "We don't know. We'll keep checking, if we can keep our funding."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 02 2016, @03:57PM
So what, _exactly_ was the reason to declare it terrestrial?
It seems to me that just some official was annoyed with it entering main stream news.
The signal was picked up over a year ago and during that time, there seems to have been no evidence either way during that time. Then suddenly we get a press release:
(https://www.sao.ru/Doc-en/SciNews/2016/Sotnikova/), that claims without evidence: "Subsequent processing and analysis of the signal revealed its most probable terrestrial origin. ".
But this is highly unlikely if taken literally. It would mean that the signal itself was obviously from earth, but it was just a single energy peak. It did not encode "I am from earth" in Morse or something. It was a frequency that is not uncommon on earth, but as far as I know, no real explanation of origin of the signal was made. And thus it merely means they have no clue what caused that signal or whether or not it is terrestrial in origin.
I don't know, but I imagine it was something like what you said. It was a blip, they looked into it, figured out it was non-news, and then forgot about it. Then mainstream media got into a frenzy, and they wanted to do a reality check.
Imagine you have a family email account, you get a weird email. You do some quick checking, find out it's safe, and then forget about it. A few months later, your brother comes in and starts shouting, "I saw this email! It's a virus! What should we do?!" What is your reaction?
I imagine it's something like, "It's not a virus. I checked it already. It's nothing. Go back to sleep."
That's what they are doing here. If you actually know the science and technology you can probably investigate why they think it is terrestrial in more technical sources, but I expect the mainstream media won't cover that if it can't be explained in a 10 second soundbite. After all, how do you explain to your non-technical brother how javascript popups are not evidence of a virus?