Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
Possible Signal
Message board moderation
Author | Message |
---|---|
Stargazer Send message Joined: 26 Jul 11 Posts: 7 Credit: 9,593 RAC: 0 |
I have been reading information on the website, and I have found that a signal must be seen with the telescope at least 2 times to even be considered a signal of interest. This is because the random noise in space can also produce such a signal. If an advanced planet sent a strong signal only 1 time, it would be missed. The chance of this happening is only 1%, but it can't be ruled out. |
skildude Send message Joined: 4 Oct 00 Posts: 9541 Credit: 50,759,529 RAC: 60 |
If an intelligent alien society sent a signal they would hopefully know that for science any test or signal needs repeatability. So that society would be doing itself a disservice by only sending a blip in our general direction In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face. Diogenes Of Sinope |
Thomas Neate Send message Joined: 25 Jun 06 Posts: 1 Credit: 51,582 RAC: 0 |
Perhaps sending only one blip in our direction, from an advanced world may be a test if this were so? If they were well advanced they could already be aware of other inhabited worlds at various levels of evolution and they could be staying away from us for a reason? perhaps until such time, the inhabitants of earth can understand enough so as not to venture to far from our home planet and cause a trail of devastation every where we venture ? we still cant manage our own world effectivel! The damage we could do to other life we may encounter! I can only assume that any advanced civilisation looking our way would do every thing in its power to prevent us from knowing to much until humanity grows up a fair bit more! |
musicplayer Send message Joined: 17 May 10 Posts: 2430 Credit: 926,046 RAC: 0 |
Should I show up here being a little more enthusiastic? Anyway, got a spike score of -0.08611 in one of my running tasks. I guess this number comes up at the start of a given task and for some reason gets higher in value in order to be updated. But I am still waiting for the rest of the numbers to be coming up, which eventually gets finalized when the score becomes uploaded to the server and ends up in my log as well. Should I still be looking for something better than +0,05 (or maybe even +0.35) when it comes to the spike score? The latter number seem guite hard to be able to obtain, nowadays. |
Stargazer Send message Joined: 26 Jul 11 Posts: 7 Credit: 9,593 RAC: 0 |
There is a 99% chance that a strong spike is just random noise from space. There is a 1% chance that an advanced planet is sending a strong signal only 1 time. Still, the stronger the spike, the better. |
skildude Send message Joined: 4 Oct 00 Posts: 9541 Credit: 50,759,529 RAC: 60 |
not really since we are talking a minimum 6 light years so anything too strong would indicate local interference In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face. Diogenes Of Sinope |
Stargazer Send message Joined: 26 Jul 11 Posts: 7 Credit: 9,593 RAC: 0 |
There is a 1% chance that a very strong spike is a very strong signal sent by an advanced planet only 1 time. There is a 99% chance that it is a signal of no interest. |
musicplayer Send message Joined: 17 May 10 Posts: 2430 Credit: 926,046 RAC: 0 |
Whether or not a Seti@home is a CUDA-based task, or a non-CUDA based task, think about ever getting a result which is not being thrown out, but ends up either in the BOINC master database and / or possibly in the Seti@home science database if there should be any difference there. Because the task may get a pulse, a gaussian and a triplet of some interest. But the spike score could still be "nominal", about -0.20. This element still is missing from the result. Should it be perhaps end up the opposite way for something to possibly be of any interest? |
Stargazer Send message Joined: 26 Jul 11 Posts: 7 Credit: 9,593 RAC: 0 |
A signal weakens as it goes a long way in space, so a signal may not be strong by the time it reaches earth. An advanced planet may send a very, very strong signal, so by the time it reached earth, the signal would still be very strong and the signal would cause a big spike. |
William Rothamel Send message Joined: 25 Oct 06 Posts: 3756 Credit: 1,999,735 RAC: 4 |
Most likely a transmission from an alien civilization would be a one-time, weak signal that would contain an unmistakeable sign of intelligence and a "we are here" type of message. I hope that we are looking for this type of scenario, Fear that we are not. |
Stargazer Send message Joined: 26 Jul 11 Posts: 7 Credit: 9,593 RAC: 0 |
There is only a 1% chance of this happening, but I think that a very strong spike we see on our screen could be from an advanced planet. There is a 99% chance that it is a signal of no interest. |
Convergence Send message Joined: 23 Jun 08 Posts: 117 Credit: 2,928,788 RAC: 0 |
There is only a 1% chance of this happening, but I think that a very strong spike we see on our screen could be from an advanced planet. There is a 99% chance that it is a signal of no interest. I think the chance is worse than that. |
William Rothamel Send message Joined: 25 Oct 06 Posts: 3756 Credit: 1,999,735 RAC: 4 |
It is an extraordinarily small chance that it is an alien transmission; If we cast away single examples of strong signals without trying to decode them and look for a message then the chance is zero in my opinion. |
Gary Charpentier Send message Joined: 25 Dec 00 Posts: 30608 Credit: 53,134,872 RAC: 32 |
It is an extraordinarily small chance that it is an alien transmission; If we cast away single examples of strong signals without trying to decode them and look for a message then the chance is zero in my opinion. Any STRONG signal comes from earth. A weak signal might come from ET. |
Bob DeWoody Send message Joined: 9 May 10 Posts: 3387 Credit: 4,182,900 RAC: 10 |
I have suggested on another forum that it is very unlikely that any other group of intelligent beings in our galactic neighborhood would be sending any greetings signal specifically in our direction, especially if they have been conducting any passive monitoring of what we've been broadcasting over the last 100 years or so. So really the only signal we are likely to intercept is one of a random nature similar to those sent from earth. I think it is much more likely that we may some day indirectly detect the presence of another civilization via the chemical signatures of elements in a planet's atmosphere that indicate the activity of a non natural nature. Bob DeWoody My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events. |
skildude Send message Joined: 4 Oct 00 Posts: 9541 Credit: 50,759,529 RAC: 60 |
Considering we've only started making electronic transmissions that could reach space in the last 80 years it is unlikely that any civilization would have received and then sent us a message back. If they had gotten the messages from the earliest days of transmissions they would know they were getting accidental and incidental transmissions and that we were still electronically in our infancy. Even if they were dumb enough to send something back our way and we were to get it today that would mean the civilization is less than 40 light years away. Still a very large leap to attempt in space travel. In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face. Diogenes Of Sinope |
William Rothamel Send message Joined: 25 Oct 06 Posts: 3756 Credit: 1,999,735 RAC: 4 |
By strong we would mean any signal significantly above the noise and therefore all signals that do not represent noise should be scanned for intelligence regardless of other ideas about strength. A Clutter Map could easily be built to screen out much of terrestrial (or satellite, or known radio sources in space) originated signals. |
Gary Charpentier Send message Joined: 25 Dec 00 Posts: 30608 Credit: 53,134,872 RAC: 32 |
By strong we would mean any signal significantly above the noise and therefore all signals that do not represent noise should be scanned for intelligence regardless of other ideas about strength. A Clutter Map could easily be built to screen out much of terrestrial (or satellite, or known radio sources in space) originated signals. STRONG signals frequently are so strong, say 100,000 times the background, that they overload the equipment. These have to be earth signals. There is no need to check these signals. We are looking for weak signals because they will be very very weak after a trip from anywhere else. They will be weaker than the signals from the Voyager spacecraft for instance. Remember the inverse square law! That doesn't mean we won't put a signal detected in the bin for that location if there is something that strong, but 99.999999% if it is that strong it originates with earth. IIRC someone posted a signal path loss calculator and given an Arecibo transmitter on ET's planet we could only hear that if it was within 200 light years or so. We are very very deaf. |
musicplayer Send message Joined: 17 May 10 Posts: 2430 Credit: 926,046 RAC: 0 |
Based on Gary Charpentier's post here, this makes me in fact believe that I actually have been found something. Because most of the numbers I now have in my logs are supposed to be "poor numbers" or being of little significant value. On the other hand, the WOW signal was a strong narrowband signal. It was detected in 1977 by Jerry H. Ehman and was supposed to be coming from space. But back in 1977 we did have satellites in space and planes could very well have been flying overhead. So, therefore I have the following questions: In the graphics for a running task, the uppermost line is supposed to be showing the pulses marked in red, the gaussian drawn through that particular series of pulses in white. My earlier graphics showed the possible triplets in green color, apparently only the same color as the pulses (red) right now. For the display of the the gaussians, what I assume to be the pulses these gaussians are made up of is being shown in red. When only the pulses are searched for in a particular task, these pulses (starting at 0.50 in score) shows up in red. This means that the spikes are not being displayed there. The gaussian low or lows lies around -12 to -13 (-12.946 in one of my current tasks). Some of my tasks are not having pulses all the time, at times nothing seems to be passing through. For the gaussians in the running, it may seem that something is being calculated all the time, at least you get a -4 score for even the not so good results. Whether or not you may get a gaussian score better than 6 at times, the score runs close to the bottom of the scale (that mentioned -12 to -13) most or almost all the time. Still the client supposedly detects the few ones which are slightly better than the rest when it comes to the scores. |
AndyJ Send message Joined: 17 Aug 02 Posts: 248 Credit: 27,380,797 RAC: 0 |
I have suggested on another forum that it is very unlikely that any other group of intelligent beings in our galactic neighborhood would be sending any greetings signal specifically in our direction, especially if they have been conducting any passive monitoring of what we've been broadcasting over the last 100 years or so. Or the light. http://www.space.com/13514-alien-city-artificial-lights-extraterrestrial-planets.html Regards, A |
©2024 University of California
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.