Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The perennial optimists at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, have joined the rest of the world in deploying AI to help manage huge data sets — and their efforts almost instantly bore fruit. Seventy-two new "fast radio bursts" from a mysteriously noisy galaxy 3 billion
miles[light years] away were discovered in previously analyzed data by using a custom machine learning model.To be clear, this isn't Morse code or encrypted instructions to build a teleporter, à la Contact, or at least not that we know of. But these fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are poorly understood and may very well represent, at the very least, some hitherto unobserved cosmic phenomenon. FRB 121102 is the only stellar object known to give off the signals regularly, and so is the target of continued observation.
The data comes from the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia (above), which was pointed toward this source of fast and bright (hence the name) bursts for five hours in August of 2017. Believe it or not, that five-hour session yielded 400 terabytes of transmission data.
Initial "standard" algorithms identified 21 FRBs, all happening in one hour's worth of the observations. But Gerry Zhang, a graduate student at UC Berkeley and part of the Breakthrough Listen project, created a convolutional neural network system that would theoretically scour the data set more effectively. Sure enough, the machine learning model picked out 72 more FRBs in the same period.
That's quite an improvement, though it's worth noting that without manual and traditional methods to find an initial set of interesting data, we would have little with which to train such neural networks. They're complementary tools; one is not necessarily succeeding the other.
-- submitted from IRC
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New technologies, strategies expanding search for extraterrestrial life:
Emerging technologies and new strategies are opening a revitalized era in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). New discovery capabilities, along with the rapidly-expanding number of known planets orbiting stars other than the Sun, are spurring innovative approaches by both government and private organizations, according to a panel of experts speaking at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Seattle, Washington.
New approaches will not only expand upon but also go beyond the traditional SETI technique of searching for intelligently-generated radio signals, first pioneered by Frank Drake's Project Ozma in 1960. Scientists now are designing state-of-the-art techniques to detect a variety of signatures that can indicate the possibility of extraterrestrial technologies. Such "technosignatures" can range from the chemical composition of a planet's atmosphere, to laser emissions, to structures orbiting other stars, among others.
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and the privately-funded SETI Institute announced an agreement to collaborate on new systems to add SETI capabilities to radio telescopes operated by NRAO. The first project will develop a system to piggyback on the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) that will provide data to a state-of-the-art technosignature search system.
"As the VLA conducts its usual scientific observations, this new system will allow for an additional and important use for the data we're already collecting," said NRAO Director Tony Beasley. "Determining whether we are alone in the Universe as technologically capable life is among the most compelling questions in science, and NRAO telescopes can play a major role in answering it," Beasley continued.
"The SETI Institute will develop and install an interface on the VLA permitting unprecedented access to the rich data stream continuously produced by the telescope as it scans the sky," said Andrew Siemion, Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI at the SETI Institute and Principal Investigator for the Breakthrough Listen Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley. "This interface will allow us to conduct a powerful, wide-area SETI survey that will be vastly more complete than any previous such search," he added.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 14 2018, @08:18PM (5 children)
This is why they shut down that observatory. It saw the mothership near the sun that came from this galaxy.
Now Trump is going to have to meet the aliens and make a deal with them on behalf of Earth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 14 2018, @08:40PM
Nah, they'll just send in Dennis Rodman.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 14 2018, @08:43PM (1 child)
Now Trump is going to have to meet the aliens and make a deal with them on behalf of Earth.
Perish the thought!
*It's no fun being an illegal alien...*
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 14 2018, @09:04PM
Trump will say to build a hydrogen wall around the solar system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 15 2018, @05:43AM
The aliens are coming to take Trump's hair back home.
(Score: 2) by dwilson on Saturday September 15 2018, @09:09PM
Good. With any luck he'll do about as well as the Warden of Heaven [wikia.com] did with the Geometers.
- D
(Score: 5, Funny) by ilPapa on Friday September 14 2018, @08:21PM (10 children)
Let's not bullshit here. We all know this is Independence Day. These new discoveries are why the FBI suddenly shut down that New Mexico observatory.
Also, Robert Mueller so far has a perfect record of getting guilty pleas in every single case he's prosecuted arising out of the Trump/Russia investigation. So, it appears our fearless leader is about to receive not one, but two anal probes. One from the aliens who are totally about to land and the other from the Special Counsel's office.
Although, if they land on the White House lawn and demand to be taken to our leader, Trump might very well just point them to Vladimir Putin.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 14 2018, @08:29PM (7 children)
Grow up.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 14 2018, @09:08PM (6 children)
Get bent, either pay attention to current reality and adjust your internal narrative accordingly or shut up.
Trump is a lying scumbag conman, start dealing with that fact now and it will be less painful.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 14 2018, @09:17PM (2 children)
Why don't you meet me in person and see whether you can tell me to "get bent", you silly little faggot.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 14 2018, @10:52PM
as much as you'd love to, I don't fuck cognitive impaired low lifers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 15 2018, @11:48PM
Got an address mr. Tough guy?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 14 2018, @09:18PM (2 children)
But at least he didn't kill any aides, fuck any interns, or launder hundreds of millions through the #CrookedHillary Foundation.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday September 14 2018, @09:27PM
It's only Friday.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 16 2018, @12:56AM
fake news
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 14 2018, @08:31PM
He needs to investigate why Russia (ie, Trump) sabotaged our space station just as the aliens were about to show up.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Saturday September 15 2018, @09:14AM
> Let's not bullshit here. We all know this is Independence Day.
I am not so sure - first thing that came to my mind when looking at the numbers was "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away"
Just sayin...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday September 14 2018, @08:29PM (2 children)
Just cosmic violence.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 14 2018, @09:35PM (1 child)
So FRB 121102 has more shooting stars than Chicago's drill scene?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday September 14 2018, @11:03PM
a quasar, that's that shit I don't like
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by anotherblackhat on Friday September 14 2018, @08:31PM (2 children)
FRB 121102 is 3 billion light years away, or 17 Sextillion miles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 14 2018, @08:37PM
Distance is irrelevant when you have stargates. You travel through the upper dimension. This movie explains it with characters that go from 2nd to 3rd dimensions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyuNrm4VK2w [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by jdavidb on Friday September 14 2018, @09:02PM
Friends don't let friends post glaring scientific, mathematical, or grammar errors without pedantically correcting them.
At least, not my kind of friends.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday September 15 2018, @05:39AM (2 children)
We're missing the real story here. Namely that FRB 121102 is the only stellar object known to give off mysterious FRB's regularly - but it still doesn't get a proper name! What are they trying to hide with their dull, easily-forgettable names?!?!?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 15 2018, @04:16PM
Name it "Trump's Star".
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday September 15 2018, @05:21PM
If we don't even know the nature of the object/event, it's hard to come up with a good name. The FRB source may be transient, which would be a waste of a name.
For example, 2014 MU69 [wikipedia.org] won't/shouldn't get a real name until we know whether it is one or two objects.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]