Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/01/01/scientists-investigate-radio-beam-from-the-direction-of-a-nearby-star.html
…
4 Likes
12 Likes
For a start its at 982.002 MHz. Why would aliens hit a precise frequency like that?
We are moving into a time when amateurs could fly little space craft around the solar system so its not beyond possibility that somebody could position a transmitter a few AU south of Earth, right between us and Proxima.
3 Likes
I have decoded the signal
7 Likes
6 Likes
It’s been suggested that the mannequin driving a Tesla around the solar system could be responsible, like if its camera is still on.
7 Likes
that might be the message 
We see your transmissions, here is one of ours. David Brin has pointed out on his blog that we say there is no modulation on the signal, but the integration period of the receiver in use is 17 seconds so maybe there is and we don’t see it. Personally I am of the opinion that the “WOW” signal is a good candidate for a prank, this one would be harder to accomplish. Brin thinks it might be a prank inserted in the data stream
3 Likes
Even if it’s not aliens, If it is Doppler effect from planetary motion, we are going to know an amazing amount about its orbital parameters and mass for an object that far away.
And we’ll go nuts trying to figure what natural phenomenon could produce a stable 982.002 MHz signal.
4 Likes
The fact that the signal started and stopped shows that it is modulated. Maybe its morse code at two words per decade.
Perhaps the scariest thing might be an alien signal transmitted to hit the middle of a band set aside for interplanetary messaging, using the specified channel separation, and digital modulation, in the top three languages used for radio comms on Earth.
A bit like starglider in Clarke’s novel The Fountains of Paradise. It just consumed information and mainly sent back messages like “whats this bullshit religion thing you keep going on about?”.
5 Likes
8 Likes
Not possible though. The roadster orbits very close to the plane of the solar system. Proxima Centauri is below that, even when accounting for the tilt of the earth’s axis.
5 Likes
Possible I’m misunderstanding the question, but 982.002 is a number in base 10, and MHz measures oscillations per second.
To an extraterrestrial civilization, that number could be anything following the pattern of x oscillations per y units of time.
9 Likes
A meaningful frequency that references something like the Hydrogen Line (roughly 1420 MHz) would be more interesting. I’d go with a factor of the ratio of the first two primes (2/3) yielding a frequency of 946.937 MHz. Then when someone sees it and asked “why use precisely that frequency?”, someone puzzle out the relationship. But you’d need to do it in a way that makes it obvious that it’s not some natural occurrence.
5 Likes
Ah, good ol’ SMAC. I still think it one of the very best of the Sid Meier’s Civ and Civ-like games, in terms of social and political dynamics! Plus, planetary engineering!
That and Steve Barcia’s Master of Magic (which was a Civ-like game overlaid with basically the Magic system of Magic: The Gathering) are still two of my all-time faves.
1 Like
Or if it were in The Water Hole, from 1420 to 1662. This band has been the focus of a lot of SETI work, since it seems the most logical band for someone to transmit in if they are trying to reach us.
(For anyone not familiar, this band is particularly quiet in the EM spectrum because free H and OH absorb almost all natural signals in it. Those molecules are very prevalent in interstellar gas and are the dissociation products of water, hence Water Hole)
3 Likes
And 21cm (wavelength of 1420MHz) was used as the length scale reference on the Voyager probes, along with a helpful picture of a hydrogen molecule for reference.
6 Likes
This looks like Butoh.
I treat these sorts of news stories as akin to the very rare occasion when I drop $2 on the SuperLottoWhatever when my expected return is nominally positive (when it’s north of $500MM). I am not going to win, but I enjoy the daydreaming that the $2 affords me. We are very likely to be ultimately disappointed, but it’s awfully bracing to think about the possibility.
3 Likes
I think it is taken from Baraka
4 Likes
