FARK.com: (6863837) No, astronomers didn't detect alien signals from space. Now, if you'd please just look into this neuralyzer

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		No, astronomers didn't detect alien signals from space. Now, if you'd please just look into this neuralyzer (blogs.discovermagazine.com)		12
		More: Unlikely, radio telescopes, kepler space telescope, Seth Shostak, SETI Institute, radio waves, extraterrestrial life, Debbie Downer, radio spectrum

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5729 clicks; posted to Geek » on 06 Jan 2012 at 5:18 PM | Favorite | share:

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12 Comments (+0 »)

View Voting Results: Smartest and Funniest

Because People in power are Stupid

2012-01-06 05:08:06 PM

I hope they find a nice Italian restaurant out there.

Marshall Willenholly

2012-01-06 05:13:45 PM

But they did find a nice compass at the bottom of their box of CrackerJack.

scottydoesntknow

2012-01-06 05:24:14 PM

Damn, I was hoping it was that lost episode of Single Female Lawyer

MaudlinMutantMollusk

2012-01-06 05:31:34 PM

***CARRIER LOST***

Keyser_Soze_Death

2012-01-06 05:33:47 PM

/obligatory if there was ever a valid reason.

Technogen

2012-01-06 08:14:52 PM

The problem was SETI's Boobies was missing some chunks of data saying it was most likely something in Earth orbit, not something from the target stars. But it's nice that Phil made the post because SETI sure as heck wasn't clearing things up on their end.

the_colonel

2012-01-06 10:00:45 PM

After weeks of effort, they finally decoded it. "Be sure to drink your Ovaltine."

Equilibrist

2012-01-06 11:29:22 PM

Nearly 80,000 hours of cpu time on SETI and I didn't get that packet.

/sigh

OhioKnight

2012-01-07 12:56:14 AM

Back in the day at OSURO, we used dual feed horns at different focus points for the scope. One horn was set as positive, one horn was set as negative, any signal leaking in from side lobes, system noise, or whatever was present in both feeds and canceled out so you didn't even see it.

The only detectable signals were those coming in from the telescope focus. The down side of that was that when we got the WOW signal, back in (whenever), the system was only measuring the difference between the feeds so we couldn't tell which of the two possible sky locations had the signal.

If the signal had persisted long enough for both horns to sweep past it, we would have known which location, but it either turned on after the first horn passed or turned off before the second could get there. Matched the antenna pattern perfectly as it moved across the beam, meaning it was at rest with respect to the fixed sky to within the ability of the telescope to detect (meaning even if it were local it was distant orbit -- lunar or greater -- not many possibles and none known where we were looking)

Perfect signal, exactly what we were looking for. Less than 10Khz bandwidth and 35 times background level. And nobody ever saw it again. Or anything else unusual in all the MANY follow-ups that scanned both possible sky locations.

way south

2012-01-07 07:03:08 AM

Keyser_Soze_Death: [troll.me image 553x484]

/obligatory if there was ever a valid reason.

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