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.
Related Stories
[An] upcoming study in The Astronomical Journal, which we learned about from MIT Technology Review, suggests humanity has barely sampled the skies, and thus has no grounds to be cynical. According to the paper, all searches for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, have examined barely a swimming pool's worth of water from a figurative ocean of signal space. "We haven't really looked much," Shubham Kanodia, a graduate student in astronomy who co-wrote the study, said during a NASA "technosignatures" workshop in Houston, Texas on September 26.
[...] In their study, Kanodia and his colleagues built a mathematical model of what they consider a reasonably sized cosmic haystack.
Their haystack is a sphere of space nearly 33,000 light-years in diameter, centered around Earth. This region captures the Milky Way's bustling core, as well as many giant globular clusters of stars above and below our home galaxy.They also picked eight dimensions of a search for aliens — factors like signal transmission frequency, bandwidth, power, location, repetition, polarization, and modulation (i.e. complexity) — and defined reasonable limits for each one. "This leads to a total 8D haystack volume of 6.4 × 10116m5Hz2s/W," the authors wrote. That is 6.4 followed by 115 zeros — as MIT Technology review described it, "a space of truly gargantuan proportions."
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Tuesday October 25 2016, @02:49AM
Just sayin. I'm pretty sure the astronomers should get laughed out of their Jr high school talks, but I prefer to think it's aliens.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @03:30AM
I love when non-experts wade into a discussion with grand pronouncements...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @03:42AM
The 2016 paper references this 2012 paper [iop.org] predicting this type of signal, which was linked in TFA but not in TFS.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday October 25 2016, @03:51AM
An oversight on my part. I've added a link to the 2012 paper in TFS.
Thanks for the catch!
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2, Informative) by tftp on Tuesday October 25 2016, @04:36AM
I have read the 2012 paper a moment ago, and it looks like the author learned about the wonders of Fourier transforms only a week ago and is in a hurry to share their discovery with the world. The paper seems to be very naive and talks about pretty obvious things. A modern RF engineer deals with far more complex DSP on a daily basis. An on-off keying will provide the spectrum in question, but it would be far more interesting to see more complex signals, that are far more noise-resistant and offer higher bandwidth that can be used for forward error correction, for example.
I will wait for the reviews to come in. But if I were to review the article, I would question the proposed scenario that an advanced alien civilization will be sending us essentially an uncoded, unmodulated carrier. Also,
they are present in only a very small fraction of stars within a narrow spectral range
As the aliens have no obvious reason to choose exactly this spectral range for a beacon, it is equally - if not more - likely that the observed frequencies are produced by a natural process that is typical to stars in exactly this spectral range. If I were an alien in charge of that transmission, I'd use all kinds of stars to make it obvious to the observer that a natural process is not likely to span so many different star configurations, periods of life and other unique physics.
In the end, we will be sure that we see a SETI message only when it is undeniably artificial. Say, a sequence of prime numbers followed by a checksum of the last 1024 entries; or a grid of X and Y (and maybe Z) that are primes, and the content of the array makes sense. That was the format of some SETI messages that were sent from this planet.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday October 25 2016, @05:11AM
The 2012 paper also has the great line "Consequently, a good way to let others know of their existence is to generate a signal that is so unusual that it can only be artificial (Tarter 2001)." Which basically disproves the 2016 paper, as apparently this signal's pretty common. (It contains only a dozen of so bits of entropy.)
What did you make of the "10^4" bit uder figure 5 in 2016? Sounds like "what we claim isn't visible in the data, so we added 10000 lots of what we want to see in the data in order to make it visible" to me.
My conclusion: Loon. Or at least someone so entrenched in milking his own confirmation bias that he can be safely ignored.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday October 25 2016, @05:21AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Tuesday October 25 2016, @07:26AM
Could it be that the signals, while artificial, were not meant as a beacon. Sure, there are better ways to transmit a beacon or a SETI message, but maybe the signals weren't meant for us to receive. To prove alien intelligence we don't need to prove an intent to contact us.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday October 25 2016, @07:04PM
Also haven't read the article.
What are the energy requirement for this kind of transmission? This is what causes me to be immediately skeptical. If the signals were produced by modulating their star, this would seem to do strange things to their weather. So I also guess that there are natural causes.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Tuesday October 25 2016, @08:44AM
As the aliens have no obvious reason to choose exactly this spectral range for a beacon, it is equally - if not more - likely that the observed frequencies are produced by a natural process that is typical to stars in exactly this spectral range. If I were an alien in charge of that transmission, I'd use all kinds of stars to make it obvious to the observer that a natural process is not likely to span so many different star configurations, periods of life and other unique physics.
I had a similar thought (hence the question at the end of TFS) and agree that this is more likely from some natural process.
However, I think the implication that the paper's authors are going for is that since these are "sun-like" stars, they could have a similar propensity for life/intelligent life and, assuming Kardashev [wikipedia.org] Type I (or even Type II) or lower level civilizations, it seems unlikely that such a civilization would have the capability to set up shop around a variety of stars just to show others they can communicate.
In the end, we will be sure that we see a SETI message only when it is undeniably artificial. Say, a sequence of prime numbers followed by a checksum of the last 1024 entries; or a grid of X and Y (and maybe Z) that are primes, and the content of the array makes sense. That was the format of some SETI messages that were sent from this planet.
This is a much more convincing argument, assuming that such signals from another civilization are intended to be received and understood by other civilizations. Which could be a pretty big assumption.
Given the type of signals, it seems unlikely that these are artificial. But even if they are, they likely weren't meant to be an advertisement for such a civilization.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 25 2016, @12:37PM
Look at our "intentional contact" signals vs our random emissions, we've got more "I Love Lucy" going out than SETI, by orders of magnitude. Some of the SETI signals were intentionally strong, but mostly, they're just buried in a background of internal chatter that leaked out.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Tuesday October 25 2016, @03:32PM
There's really no way around it: we make a lot of assumptions. We assume that any civilization will send using the electromagnetic spectrum. We assume that they will send us something intelligible, like prime numbers. We assume that they will format this information in a way that we can decode.
We cannot even manage to understand animal speech, on a planet where we are closely related to the animals involved. What is it that the chimpanzees are communicating to each other? Whales? Dolphins? We have only the vaguest of ideas, even though their communication ought to be very simple and limited.
Or consider dogs: we're not only both mammalian, we've lived with them for thousands of years. Yet the communication that they have with each other through scent is, literally, beyond our comprehension.
And we think we'll be able to communicate with aliens?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @04:21PM
No. But if they are not sending in the electromagnetic spectrum, we won't currently be able to receive their signals. So we look at the electromagnetic spectrum because that's the only place where we can at least hope to find something.
Imagine you are in a desert, and in one direction there might be an oasis within your reach, and in another direction it is far more likely that there is an oasis, but any oasis there may be is definitely out of reach. Which direction will you go to?
If there are actually any aliens actively trying to contact us, it is very likely that they will use something they can hope us to understand. Which almost certainly means using something involving the fundamental properties of natural numbers, as those are independent of any culture. Of course we cannot know for sure, but then, if we can't understand it, it might as well not be there, so again the original point applies: We look for what we can recognize, because that's the only thing we can hope to find.
Well, in those cases where the animals try to tell us something, they usually succeed quite well. Maybe you've never had a pet, or else you'd know.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @04:48PM
I have read the 2012 paper a moment ago, and it looks like the author learned about the wonders of Fourier transforms only a week ago and is in a hurry to share their discovery with the world.
I've only glanced at the 2012 paper, and not looked at the 2016 one at all -- I got the same sort of vibe.
An on-off keying will provide the spectrum in question, but it would be far more interesting to see more complex signals, that are far more noise-resistant and offer higher bandwidth that can be used for forward error correction, for example.
Yeah, but there's actually some basis for that, for a given set of suppositions. If the aliens want to signal their existence, and want this signal to be received by other cultures as early as possible, then this could make sense. It's a strategy to make sure the signal shows up on routine astronomical observations. Other types of signals, while better for communication, may require more effort on the receiver's end to be aware the signal exists. Presumably, a culture sending such a signal would send one or more coded signals in parallel -- the unmodulated carrier gets your attention during spectrographic surveys, then you start paying close attention and spot the coded signal on whatever frequency.
they are present in only a very small fraction of stars within a narrow spectral range
As the aliens have no obvious reason to choose exactly this spectral range for a beacon, it is equally - if not more - likely that the observed frequencies are produced by a natural process that is typical to stars in exactly this spectral range. If I were an alien in charge of that transmission, I'd use all kinds of stars to make it obvious to the observer that a natural process is not likely to span so many different star configurations, periods of life and other unique physics.
Does "the evolution of intelligent life with an interest in SETI" qualify as a "natural process that is typical to stars in exactly this spectral range"?
Others have pointed this out, but the authors' idea seems to be that this indicates something closer to 234 cultures each with a beacon at their home star rather than 1 culture with beacons at 234 stars. The underlying assumption is that (at the time these signals originate) they had little interstellar travel capability, and if they did have it, only used it to travel to very similar systems (presumably because those were the ones with "interesting" planets in their equivalent of the habitable zone). Whereas you're assuming one culture with interstellar travel cheap enough to go to inhospitable stars to set up SETI beacons (and scientific observations, but still).
I don't think we know enough to determine which set of assumptions is more likely.
Of course, anytime someone starts talking about stars like Sol being uniquely suited to life, one must be wary -- remember all the assumptions of our solar system being typical that got thrown out when we started uambiguously detecting exoplanets. But then again, if life does exist around all types of stars, it may be true that life originating at stars similar to ours are more likely to be similar to us, and thus to have a better chance at effective communication.
In the end, we will be sure that we see a SETI message only when it is undeniably artificial. Say, a sequence of prime numbers followed by a checksum of the last 1024 entries; or a grid of X and Y (and maybe Z) that are primes, and the content of the array makes sense. That was the format of some SETI messages that were sent from this planet.
Agreed, although more the former than the latter, as I question the idea of an array that "makes sense" between alien cultures. (Both in the context of us recognizing such a thing when we receive it, and of it being a useful format for us to transmit.)
But yeah, if this "discovery" checks out, the next step is to pay some serious attention to these systems, looking for such coded signals.
(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?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @06:24AM
If these star systems are "flashing", then we should be able study the period and spectrum of the flashes more closely. Unless maybe they were say laser signals that just happened to be pointed our way during observation. If that were the case, detailed followup could be tricky; it would be Whack-A-Mole.
(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.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @06:28AM
Ironically the galaxy is full of exploding Galaxy Note 7's.
Try naming the next set Dark Matter 7 and see what happens...
(Score: 5, Funny) by q.kontinuum on Tuesday October 25 2016, @06:53AM
Honorable Sir, My name is Qxrtzryx, son of the regent of the star system Nigarius. Due to some political turmoil we need to leave the system. In order to transfer our vast wealth out of our current bank accounts, I'm asking your kind support.
Rest of the message is still on the way...
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @08:30AM
I hear such things a lot but far more I hear about is how if relativity is right then 95% of the universe is invisible stuff arranged just so, undetectable except for the failure of GR to predict accurately based on what is visible.
Is there a list of these successes with the attached raw data, etc we can look at?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @09:24AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_special_relativity [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @11:11AM
This isn't really what I am looking for. Rather than prose, is there a list somewhere with links to the papers and data. Skimming through I see a dozen or so times predictions have matched with data. Is that it?
(Score: 3, Informative) by bootsy on Tuesday October 25 2016, @04:50PM
It explains why Gold and Copper are not the silver/grey colo(u)r of most other metals.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @08:16PM
What are you looking for? You want a nice list of occurrences? Every time I knock my pencil off of my desk, I don't go and write a paper on the confirmation of Newtonian gravity and make a notch in the "confirmation" log. What more do you want from General Relativity? It predicted bending of light around masses which has been observed many many times. Precision timing has allowed direct confirmation of the rate of atomic clocks. You need to correct for this if you are doing precision geodesy. That's done millions of times a day. You've got the LIGO confirmation. That's huge. These are properties that the theory predicted, then were found, not the other way around.
Maybe you're better off with a page like this [ucr.edu], but I'm still not sure where you're coming from. Are you one of those who throw their hands up and say "I don't believe in quantum mechanics" simply because it just doesn't "feel" right? Is relativity the be-all end-all of theories? No, not even Einstein thought that. But do you really don't think it is a very good theory and is not tested? It might not be computational to the QED-level, but people have been trying to shoot holes in it for 100 years and it deflects every shot. In fact, it is SO good in the realm where it works, just like quantum mechanics, that there is a whole field of physics and people have spent their professional career trying to find a unifying theory to combine the two because they are both such excellent theories by themselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @09:46PM
I see where you are coming from, but still think it is disingenuous of the people who keep saying "look how many times the predictions of relativity were correct" without mentioning the times they clearly aren't. In fact, a falsification means much more than a confirmation.
(Score: 2) by lgw on Wednesday October 26 2016, @01:12AM
I see where you are coming from, but still think it is disingenuous of the people who keep saying "look how many times the predictions of relativity were correct" without mentioning the times they clearly aren't. In fact, a falsification means much more than a confirmation.
That's because there aren't any "times they clearly aren't" yet, nice as it would be for physics if we would find some. There are many areas of physics where relativity has nothing to say, of course, like any theory. Sure, dark energy may turn out to be something inconsistent with general relativity, that's possible, and there are certainly dark energy theories along those lines, but then there are plenty that aren't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @12:32PM
GR broke down almost right away in predicting the orbits of stars in galaxies. Just one level of complexity up from the solar system.
(Score: 2) by lgw on Wednesday October 26 2016, @07:16PM
No, it really didn't. Not even a little. Nor did Newtonian physics, which is a lot more relevant. Dark matter was instead the answer: to galactic rotation rates, to gravitational lensing where no visible matter existed (GR being right again), and to the distribution of matter in the early universe as observed via the CMBR.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @09:45PM
Anti-dark matter troll alert. Can't accept the fact that dark matter has been indirectly observed to the level that gravitational radiation was when PSR B1913+16 was discovered.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @11:37PM
Dark matter may or may not be the right solution in the end, but it is an extremely flexible ad hoc solution. Has it lead to any successful predictions outside of the problems it was devised to solve (ie deviation from GR predictions)?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 27 2016, @04:08AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 27 2016, @04:34AM
The "subtle peaks" in the CMB spectrum sounds ok, I'll check that... the rest sounds like it is unobservable stuff that happened billions of years ago.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 27 2016, @06:07AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @04:22AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @12:34PM
Ive come to think those theories are hugely different. In one gravity is instantaneous, in the other it follows a universal speed limit. These are two totally different universes that hold totally different possibilities.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @10:48AM
it's not just failure of GR to predict, it's also the CMWB spectrum, where gravity doesn't really matter.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday October 25 2016, @12:50PM
On other sites there are two points not being brought up on this site, so far
1) The ratio of stars where the transmitters (physical) are next to the transmitters (people, for lack of better word) vs where they make the transmissions come from a neighboring star (or distant star) is a measure of galaxy wide cross cultural paranoia and trust in neighborhoods (perhaps a measure of lack of diversity?) at the biological level and perhaps AI assisted psychology. Easily the physically largest psychology experiment I've ever heard of. It'll give optimists and pessimists something to argue about for centuries. Lets say 90% of alien races are paranoid and they troll the galaxy by remotely stimulating stars that any half ass 2400AD level astronomy department can remotely tell has no planets, that means 90% of independently evolved civilizations are paranoid-ish of invasion, either because there is a threat or paranoia is natural and normal (therefore good?) or maybe the other way around who knows.
2) As a related manner our culture is chill with legacy dying broadcast media and is watching the rise of meme image boards and echo chambers and the mental illness of social media progressive holiness signalling spirals and all that. I'm just saying that assuming the culture and mentality of an alien race is much like 1950s American TV broadcasting as a cultural ideal is possible but incredibly unlikely to hold true. This could all be some kind of interstellar /pol/ space alien thing where a bunch of alien NEETs are bored and there's no good posts on /r9k/ or /hc/ so they go to interstellar /pol/ and decide to raid the stupid hairless primates orbiting the Sol system who have been shitposting noisy primitive modulation types for about a century so they know all about us and 234 stars is some kind of trolly number for space aliens (maybe its how many legs they have or ...) like how we'd use the number 42 or 1488 to trigger people (for better or worse of course). They might be Fing with us, they might be sending us Trump memes, this whole thing might be some degenerate advanced form of progressive holiness spiral signalling to give us meme virii like religions or progressivism or cults or who knows.
I'm just saying that we're culturally post-broadcasting media where everyone thinks legacy broadcasters are important although as a percentage nobody watches that legacy shit anymore, and as a world superpower we're pretty chill with the concept of radio broadcasting because nobody shoots 80s era HARM antiradiation missiles at us although we blast everyone else with them (almost universally for decades the victims have been poor non-white people). So I'm just saying that assuming the space aliens are culturally American Brogrammers who just wanna go out for cheezeburgers and have some jocular locker room talk about grabbing female anatomy is theoretically possible but ridiculously over the top provincially anthropomorphic and the aliens culture and motivations are almost certain to actually be a total WTF, whatever they may turn out to be.
The transmission could decode to something like this: "Hi mai name is qhehdet sjlpdfh (H1B name) and eye R an alien, a real space alien not a mere undocumented mexican, and looking at the last century of your shitposts you've been broadcasting to the whole universe, that we all have to hear like a tactless man farting in an elevator, BTW, not cool man cut that shit out, and seeing as you stupid non-lavender skin colored hairless apes clearly have not discovered the non-aggression-principle given your nightly network news shitposts that we've seen, I'm a gonna demonstrate how I'm more mentally ill err I mean more progressive by shitposting an absolute storm of memes about how I am the holiest of all NAP prophets compared to the other losers who can't shitpost as well as I can and its a double plus ungood thought crime to not like the NAP now stand by for a shitpost storm of memes transmitted in animated .gif format (animated gif because we have a million years of meme evolution on you so we've gone beyond mspaint and .png files like you losers)" We may actually have aliens here on planet earth, I think I've read something like the above on /b/. That explains a lot about /b/.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Tuesday October 25 2016, @04:53PM
I'm happy enough to say that I know so little about social media and these strange patterns (/pol/?), not to mention NAP, and the rest that I need an alien to help me decode the latter half of your post. If that is what social media is like, man, I'm missing nothing.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by lgw on Wednesday October 26 2016, @01:14AM
He wasn't talking about social media, but rather antisocial media: the chans.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @08:42PM
No worries man, pretty sure that post was just another auto-generated AI WoT. ;)
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @03:18AM
>/pol/
>/r9k/
>/b/
come on man, you could complete the shitpost by adding /qa/, /int/, /mlp/, /lgbt/, and /v/.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 26 2016, @02:45PM
Ironically I lurk a lot on /DIY/ and /OUT/ and well, obviously, /POL/
The community on /DIY/ is not just /B/ with hammers, its actually mostly nice bunch of people. /OUT/ in a similar way isn't /B/ with backpacks, /OUT/ is mostly nice people. I do community for those two boards everywhere I go.