Okay, so it’s not quite April 5, 2063 just yet, but . . .
LONDON (Reuters) – An unexplained radio signal from deep space could — just might be — contact from an alien civilization, New Scientist magazine reported on Thursday.
The signal, coming from a point between the Pisces and Aries
constellations, has been picked up three times by a telescope in Puerto Rico.
New Scientist said the signal could be generated by a previously unknown astronomical phenomenon or even be a by-product from the telescope itself.
But the mystery beam has excited astronomers across the world.
“If they can see it four, five or six times it really begins to get
exciting,” Jocelyn Bell Burnell of the University of Bath in western
England told the magazine.
It was broadcast on the main frequency at which the universe’s most common element, hydrogen, absorbs and emits energy, and which astronomers say is the most likely means by which aliens would advertise their presence.
The potentially extraterrestrial signals were picked up through the
SETI@home project, which uses programs running as screensavers on millions of personal computers worldwide to sift through the huge amount of data picked up by the telescope.
Linky
My whole life, I have hoped that we would look to the stars, and find undeniable proof that we are not alone in the universe. Could this be it?
Update: Aw, dammit. As synchronicity points out in comments, probably not:
A recent (September 1) article in New Scientist magazine, entitled ? Mysterious signals from 1000 light years away,? implies that the UC Berkeley SETI@home project has uncovered a very convincing candidate signal that might be the first strong evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Alas, this story is misleading. According to Dan Werthimer, who heads up the UC Berkeley SERENDIP SETI project, this is a case of a reporter failing to understand the workings of their search. He says that misquotes and statements taken out of context give the impression that his team is exceptionally impressed with one of the many candidate signals, SHGb02+14a, uncovered using the popular SETI@home software. They are not.
Well, I still say we are not alone. So there. Nyah.
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Wil:
It’s only a matter of time now before “First Contact.” Your link fits in nicely with the recent news about NASA finding smaller, more numerous, and more Earth-like planets.
By the way, where do you stand on the whole “Are we alone question”?
That is too cool! I hope they’re able to find the signal again.
Even if they find the single again, and offworlders are cruising by… who says that they’d want to stop *here*?
Me, I’d keep the car – erm, ship – in 6th gear and keep going 🙂
Probably not:
http://www.seti.org/about_us/info_for_media/in_the_news/setiathome_found_signal.php
I completely believe that we are NOT alone. It’s a HUGE Universe out there, you know . . .
I happen to agree we’re not alone, but this signal isn’t dramatic enough to make it an Ellie Arroway-type discovery, in my humble opinion (although I do think it’s interesting, and I do have a degree in astronomy). I think your blog on this was worthwhile, however.
Make that PROBABLY not alone…
Hey Wil! Thanks for the link! I completely agree that we are not alone… and that second link/update/whatever just makes me think it’s a cover-up. 🙂
and my conspiracy theorist deep down re-emerges. maybe it’s some kind of bizarre government coverup and the signals are actually what the first article would have us believe.
Or maybe I just didn’t read the original articles and don’t know enough about the subject.
i’ve been crunching numbers for the seti@home project for about 7 months now…and i check out the seti website frequently…today there were rumblings of this discovery…but moments after i read about it, i found that it had been debunked…i’m still hopeful though that sometime soon we will find real proof of the existance of extra-terrestrial intellegence…every time i see a picture of the rings of saturn i think…hmmmm…just a natural phenomena…or the calling card of visitors from another star system…a sort of celestial bar-code…thoughts like this keep me entertained…and dreaming…of what might be out there…waiting to be found…waiting for us to explore…when we finally decide to pursue the mysteries of the final frontier.
The aliens were here, but they left. They said to tell you to give the messanger (me) an autograph and a cookie. Obey or they destroy the world! *pleasey pleasey*
Man, at times like these, I wish I’d done a little more fact-checking.
Hey, Fox News! Hire me!
Far too many problems with this signal and drift (or lack thereof).
I must be the only astronomer in the universe not so excited by a 21 cm line. . .
On the upside though, our wonderful space telescope that I work for is going to look at the new Neptune sized planets around other stars soon.
Think of it like this. With all that hoo-ha about WMD and the fact that our society and the next few generations are trained skeptics, if we ever did make “first contact” would it make any newspapers other than the Inquirer? We’re so numb to crazy and shocking news because most of it is BS that we’ll probably let the moment pass. It’s sad, I do believe that we’re not alone.
well, there ARE a lot of UFO’s being sighted lately…
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5897539/
I would have to say that we are definitley *not* alone. One would have to be pretty arrogant to believe that we are the only sentient beings in the universe.
There are plenty of examples within our everyday lives that illustrate the fact that what we thought was nothing actually happened to be something after all.
Bacteria for instance. Just because you can’t see or, from a common perspective, touch bacteria does not mean that there isn’t any.
The universe is a massive place existing in 360 degrees all at once. You would have a more realistic chance of finding a needle in a haystack the size of the moon than you would using the limited methods that the SETI folks are using.
I firmly belileve that there are other species out there and I hope the SETI teams are the first to contact them purely from a common sense and goodwill perspective.
*They* have visited us before and will visit us again. Hell, they might even be here right now.
Gotta go, I’m getting an awful sunburn on the left side of my face and I have an overwhelming desire to build a big mountain out of mud in the living room.
As others have commented, Wil, we’ve been looking at this particular signal for over a year now. It was first detected in Feb of 2003. As another poster commented, there are several interesting problems with this signal that makes it very intersting, but probably not an alien transmission. Nothing has been ruled out yet, but in all probability, this is not the Arroway Signal.
Even given that, this is a very, very exciting time in astronomy. SETI@Home has given us technology, possibilities, and data that was undreamed of when it started. And what SETI@Home has developed has implications far and away beyond that of astronomy.
Think of it. When you were driving the Enterprise we knew of 8 or 9 planets (depending on where you fall in the Pluto debate) in the universe. Now we know so many that the International Astronomical Union has voted not to bother naming them…because they know we’ll discover THOUSANDS in the next decade.
Will any of them have life? Telescopes are being built now that have a chance to detect not only Earth-sized planets, but analyze their atmospheres for organic compounds. Probes are being designed to investigate the water ocean we think is under the ice of Europa in our own solar system.
Stay tuned. I’d be surprised if we detect an Arroway Signal within our lifetimes. Indeed, the SETI community is beginning to see that such signals may have a very brief window of detection so NOT detecting anything may not mean there is nothing out there at all. However, I do think that we will discover life outside of Earth within our lifetimes and that it will take the form of bacteria underground on either Mars or Europa.
And for those of us who realize the implications of such a discovery, that will be the happiest and most significant date in history!
Wil: Iam not one of those people who freak out when they see some famous person. I think they should be treated the same as everyone else…Do you agree? If it is possible I was would like to be PinPals…If that is ok with you? I read every update on your blog and listen to every update on your audoblog and i have just gotten finished on looking at all the pictures. You are my favaorite actor,and writer and that you are the person that has kept me sane for 17 years. Knowing that i have someone to look up to and that they will always be in my heart makes me fell that i have something more to live for than just to please my parents. My dream is to become a succuffical piano player and to meet you and make you proud of me. You are my life safer and I thank god every day that you are alive. I know that you are busy and that you do not respond to all of your emails. I just need your permison to use some of your pictures and Information about you on my site and to link to your site? My site is http://www.geocites.com/wow1617
I know you will probly not respond to this neither and that is ok… Just thought I would see if I can get your permision! Well… I guess that is it. well my email is [email protected]
Tell Anne, Felix, Ferri, Nolan and everybody I said Hey and that I love yall.
Bye
Well,
To many possibilities, has to be something or someone more. Proof though 🙂
I was a member of the seti@home team for a year or two. Never got any feedback from em so i quit.
🙂
I have enough trouble trying to figure myself out let alone other people… let alone extraterrestrial lifeforms!
Maybe they could help me figure something out?!
Who knows what the signal is? Whose to say we would understand it even if it WERE meant to be understood?
Aw, bummers. That had my hopes up but nevertheless my SETI@home is still crunching away on my work PC. I am still hoping that during my lifetime we find some sign of life elsewhere. :^) I’m also waiting for that warp engine so I can take my trip to Saturn. ;^) Been doing so since I was a little kid. :^)
“I must be the only astronomer in the universe not so excited by a 21 cm line. . .
”
Yes, you are.
😉
(I almost chose radio astronomy as a specialty).
Wil, I made an entry on my blog about this today, and I used the same Zephram Cochrane reference. What a bizarre coincidence… I wouldn’t have even visited your page today if it weren’t for a a convoluted path from a Slashdot article on “Internet Babylon”.
Coincidences never cease to amaze me!
There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that we are not alone in this vast universe. It is inconceivable that among the uncountable stars and solar systems in all the galaxies of this thing we exist in that we are the only life..
We are NOT alone.. we may not have proof yet, but one day we will.
There was a moment there, for about a tenth of a second, when I couldn’t force myself to read the second half of this post. I’m a reasonably intelligent guy and I’ve heard most of the arguments for and against the existence of alien intelligence and the probability that we’ll communicate with another race in my lifetime. I know the odds, and that’s why I didn’t want to keep reading.
Because for that moment – that infinitesimal slice of not-time between two otherwise unremarkable instances – I believed.
*pokes synchro*
Unfortunately 21 cm lines just aren’t sexy for me. Now on the other hand give me a planetary candidate and let me look for ozone and that’s another story!
I must be one of the few astronomers who questions the SETI method. We should be doing more projects like the one I work for and the upcoming Terrestrial Planet Finders which are looking for spectroscopic evidence of atmospheric similarilites between the extrasolar planets and our own. So far as we know, the best shot at finding life is to find another planet with an atmosphere like Earth.
*sighs* Darned sexy planet seaches. They take away all my money to look for flying rock 😉
Hmmm… Now that you mention it, Wil, maybe you *should* apply at FoxNews? I’ll bet you’d make an interesting reporter! 🙂
Well, it hasn’t actually been said that, “No, it’s NOT anything,” just that there’s not enough evidence to say that it’s more than just something interesting. As they said, if it’s picked up 3 more times, then it gets “exciting.”
I’m not holding my breath, but neither am I giving up hope.
Will there be no “Fish On Part 3”? Are you really just going to leave it at that? What happened when you got to the casino?
I think I’ve been very patient about this.
I agree with you, Wil. I’ve always believed that there’s life out there. Hopefully, when we find them they’ll be friendly, and not looking for human slaves. :o)
Oh, the thrill of those first few words … I, too, held my breath for a moment in the hope that we had, somehow, gotten someone else’s mail. Then I thought, “Nah, that would’ve been all over the news if it had really happened.” Wouldn’t it? Ah, well.
Yeah, I’m one of the hopefuls. Somewhere, somehow, sometime, we’ll get that Arroway Signal and life will expand in amazing ways. Yet my fear, too, is that we’ll get our e.t. signal and we’ll pooh-pooh it and/or ignore it, all in the name of fear or pride. I’m thinking we’ve got a bit of a ways to go before we’re ready for someone else in the neighborhood – look how we’re doing with our own planet.
Okay, enough babbling. 🙂 Thanks for the opportunity to briefly wax rhapsodic about one of my favorite mild obsessions.
I suspect that, after the past century of Earth history, there’s a cordon around our galaxy in bright ‘danger colors’ and garish icons indicating ‘Lethal Hazard’. Or perhaps dealers in radioactives waiting for the BIG WAR to happen so they can just vacuum the isotopes out of the atmosphere.
Thank heavens someone’s still looking up! Maybe there’s hope.
I very highly doubt that the fact that our little blue-and-green planet is an anomaly among the trillions upon trillions of planets out there…Hell, I even entertain the notion that there could be an earth doppelganger out there, it’s just too far away for us to find.
But then again, maybe extra-terrestrials HAVE contacted Earth…but, see, the people who claim to have been ubducted by “aliens” (most of them, anyway) don’t seem to represent an accurate cross-section of our population…so maybe they got bored with us.
Then again again, we may just be some uber-child’s odd version of sea monkeys and our universe is inside a giant terrarium.
This is why I don’t read or watch the major sources of news. Too much misquoting and misinterpreting going on. I seem to know a lot about what’s going in the world though, which surprises the heck out of me since I don’t go out of my way to absorb the news.
I figure there are probably other sentient beings “out there” somewhere. I just hope they’re not like those fellas in “Mars Attacks.”
Could someone please explain the International Sign of the Donut?
One of my favorite movie quotes is from “Contact” regarding whether or not there was life on other planets:
Palmer: “Well, if there wasn’t, it would be an awful waste of space.”
And forget Fox News… I wanna see you do a guest spot on Stargate!
For anyone to say we’re alone, completely alone in this universe is arrogant and asinine (ah, sweet Alliteration). How can they possibly know what lies beyond our feeble technology?
I’d love love love to see you on Stargate SG1. That would be 37 flavors of farking awesome.
Mind you, the new inspired me to get seti@home up and running again…
How did I procrastinate before blogs? This is a fantastic diversion from work.
I’ve heard that when all of the circumstances needed to create life on this planet were factored in, the highest number of planets in the universe that could support life as we know it is 14.
I’ve never said it before, but THANKS. Seriously. Between you, nickerblog, wonkette and stereogum I have just enough amusement to get through the work day. It’s not as if the job sucks. It’s just that I can only make maps and do web updates for so long before I get bored. I do really enjoy your writing and your sense of humor.
Eh, it’s only 2004. Depending on which SF movie you believe, we’ve either got six years (2010:The Year We Make Contact), or 59 years (2063, Star Trek:First Contact)
Be of good cheer, Wil; they’re just covering up the Truth. It really IS out there.
Well, I’m doing my part. I’ve got SETI@home running on two Macs at home and my work PC.
Dear Sir,
There are more wonders in heaven and earth and are imaginable by the human mind. They are mainly kept secrect for a reason. I do know there is something out there, but for reasons I would never speak. I do not have mainstream ideas, nor would I want to. The hidden truths are far more interesting than common belief. But as for our illustrious government they choose to do as they do because of the sheep we have become. Let the children have their secrect for no one listens to children. Truthfully, do you really want to know? It is nice to fantasize about it, but would you really like to know the truth? Everyone wants to know, but usually sorry to know it. Do you think the mindless are ready to know? Answers are like fruit that has fallen to the ground…while it may look good, it could be bad. Don’t get me wrong, but I know better not to say to much, or to too many people. Good luck on your search for knowledge, and if you come across some truth along the way, let me know.
hey wil, i too believe that there is no way we can be alone in this universe!!! i mean, it’s just inconceivable that in the great expanse of space Earth can be the only inhabited planet. i think that people who believe so, are just narrow-minded and ignorant.
anyway…rant over! here’s hoping we make some contact soon!!
hope all is well…
take care
rach
Let’s hope we don’t discover life outside out Solar System. Why? Because we’ll be instantly eradicated. It’s true! I saw it on a Kids in the Hall episode.
ooh… just finished reading Contact.
We CAN’T be alone. The universe is just too damned big for us to be all by ourselves on this little rock…
Here’s hoping 😀
I certainly hope they come and visit soon. After watching the RNC I firmly believe that Zell Miller is in more dire need of an anal probe that any man ever known.
Oh yeah… almost forgot to ask. Who’s Zefram Cochrane? I don’t recognize him from Seti or NASA.