Has anyone else heard about these radio signals from space?
 

I was listening to talk radio this afternoon and the news mentioned something about scientists who have recently discovered radio signals from space, from around the Pisces constellation.

Has anyone else heard of this who has more details? I am interested in this, but the report lasted only about 10 seconds.

It was from ABC radio news, not Art Bell or anything like that, otherwise I'd post this in Paranoia. Also not sure if THIS is the right place to post this, but I wanted to make sure lots of people saw it, in case someone know more about this.

Just thinking about advanced life forms makes me excited. If they were more intelligent than us, I wonder if that automatically gives them the right to put us in their alien zoos.

Maybe they are trying to tell us to stop sending them Seinfeld reruns.

Okay, that is all.

here ya go
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/0....signals.reut/

Yes,

I also heard that the same scientists said something like, "Opps, nevermind!".

Seems they were having some equipment difficulty or some such.

If this is right, then... damn. I guess there is no one to show us the way to world peace. :|

It's XM's new channels ;-)

It was posted on the Drudge report on Wednesday or Thursday. Within a few hours the website that first carried the story was pretty much obliterated from the massive influx of people coming from the Drudge report. The lesson: don't put a story out that's Drudge-worthy if your servers can't handle the massive influx of 10 million people that check the Drudge report daily.

And yeah, it was later debunked.

It's probably an alien teenager running too much bass...

I believe that there are Aliens out there, unfortianitly they are probably way to far away to contact. I mean they would have to be thousands of years ahead of us in technology for us to be getting a simple radio message because of how long it takes radio waves to be sent to Earth from almost any star.

Even if they did send us a radio message, it would take ages to figure out, and even more ages for them to send another message.

From http://planetary.org/news/2004/seti_signal_0902.html



------
Reports of SETI@home Extraterrestrial Signal Highly Exaggerated
(by Amir Alexander)

September 2, 2004:

A rash of reports in recent days that SETI@home has discovered a likely signal from an alien civilization are highly exaggerated, says SETI@home Chief Scientist Dan Werthimer of U.C. Berkeley.

The storm was initiated by an article in New Scientist magazine, which reported about SETI@home’s most promising candidate signal to date, and speculated about its possible origins. Like all of SETI@home’s 5 billion potential signals, this candidate, labeled SHGb02+14a, was assigned a numerical score representing the statistical likelihood that it is indeed an intelligent extraterrestrial signal. Its relatively high score placed it among the 200 “top candidates” selected for the targeted reobservation sessions that took place in March of 2003 at the Arecibo Radio Observaotry. Of all the candidates targeted in the sessions, however, SHGb02+14a was one of the very few to be confirmed during the reobservations, and the only one whose score following the sessions actually went up.

A sky map of the reobservations that took place at Arecibo in March of 2003. The blue areas represent the plane of the Milky Way, the gray strip the band of sky seen from Arecibo. The squares mark the locations of the signal candidates revisited during the reobservation sessions.
Image: University of California/SETI@home

While this makes SHGb02+14a interesting, the chances that it actually represents an intelligent signal from beyond remain extremely slim. Random chance alone would make it probable that at least one of the billions of candidates detected by SETI@home would be observed on three separate occasions, as was the case for this candidate. Furthermore, as we reported in the SETI@home Update of May 17, 2004, the fact that this candidate’s frequency drifts rapidly makes it extremely improbable that it is a transmission from extraterrestrials. Because of the drift, explained Werthimer, “if we had looked at the sky even a few seconds later we wouldn’t have found a match” for this candidate. A signal that drifts so quickly that it can only be heard for seconds at a time at a given frequency can only be detected by blind luck. Needless to say, such a transmission is an unlikely vehicle for message from an advanced civilization.

In addition, SETI@home Project Director David Anderson of U.C. Berkeley pointed out that SHGb02+14a is a candidate of a type known as a "barycentrically corrected gaussian." A true transmission of this type, he explained, would remain in a more or less fixed narrow-band frequency, and not drift rapidly as this signal does.

At Arecibo the giant radio telescope still scans the sky, looking for an alien transmission. Around the world, millions are still crunching SETI@home data on their personal computers. The Search for extraterrestrial intelligence continues at full speed, but as of now there is no breakthrough.

Of course, this could change at any time… We promise to keep you posted.

Yep, I've heard about this - and it was in the context of switching from folding@home to seti@home, an idea I find hilarious.

All my boxen are used for folding@home these days. I find it alot more likely to find a cure for alzheimers and other protein-related diseases than to find an genuine signal from aliens.

Would they tell us if it was anything? I dont think so. They (USgov) will let us know when they want. Probably in 50 years or so. :)

Uhh, why US?

Something that occured to me...
Are WE advertising our presence? Are we sending out a hydrogen based transmission that isn't random noise?

From what I've read we are, along with the information that was encapsulated in the Voyager probes.

Also, they're experimenting with some sort of laser communication. It wouldn't be anything more than a point of light in space as far as I can figure out, but it's still a way to say "hey look, something is making an unnatural light source over here."

does anyone know if version so the signals themselves are on line?
i havent found them, but do not have time to search around today---if anyone else is curious and looks, please post a link.

Is this true or are you just being silly?

I thought XM did release new channels, or maybe I'm just being unobservant because I just noticed a bunch of new ones on my XM.

or maybe they are asking how much the DVD box set is.

SETI @ home is a fun little program to watch.

SETI@Home is a cool little program. I've had it on both of my computers.

yes good program, story is a bummer.

Us Pisceans really are bored with Seinfeld. It's like Yiddish 101.

It's a good thing I'm wearing my foil hat.

Damn Klingons, they better not interfere with my Simpsons reception.

Grrr. I am sick of SETi. Always getting my hopes up, and then deciding that is was a malfunction. CURSE YOU SETI!!!!