Wow signal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal

by joering2 • 12 years ago

125 95 12 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

"In 2012, on the 35th anniversary of the Wow! signal, Arecibo Observatory beamed a response from humanity, containing 10,000 Twitter messages"

Oh, man, what will they think of us now? Couldn't we have sent Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and similar content?

yukichan• 12 years ago

The tweets must have been specific replies. They probably weren't just sending a random popular hash tag or something.

i386• 12 years ago

But if they were random, now the universe knows about twibbons and Kony.

ekianjo3• 12 years ago

What's more ridiculous is the assumption that other life forms may somehow understand the messages we send them in our own language. It's so preposterous I don't even know where to begin.

taternuts• 12 years ago

What do you suppose we beam to them other than our codified way of communicating? You can only hope they could potentially decipher it to grok some meaning.

vinkelhake• 12 years ago

Maybe, just maybe, this is done more for the authors of those 10k tweets rather than any potential extraterrestrials.

iLoch• 12 years ago

I love the messages we sent in Voyager 1 and 2 - they were quite capable of explaining our methods of communication.

Houshalter8• 12 years ago

It was more of a ceremonial thing that a practical attempt to communicate with aliens. However they would be able to infer a lot of information from them, albeit not fully translate it. Reminds me of That Alien Message (http://lesswrong.com/lw/qk/that_alien_message/).

Oculus• 12 years ago

Reminds me of the scene in Contact when they realize that the signal is a video of Adolf Hitler making an address.

ACow_Adonis• 12 years ago

They sent tweets? Oh jesus.

Not only do have to worry about whether there is intelligent life to receive our message, or whether they understand it, but we also have to worry about the certainty that they will now either be hostile, or else not very intelligent...

S_A_P• 12 years ago

Its the 2012 equivalent of beaming an episode of Jerry Springer to aliens...

phy6• 12 years ago

I'm just going to post what everyone was thinking when they saw the headline. http://i.imgur.com/BNDIpy3.jpg

sarreph• 12 years ago

Such frequency.

theorique• 12 years ago

Many signal.

jjgreen• 12 years ago

So $\exp^{-x^2}$.

TrainedMonkey5• 12 years ago

And more importantly - will they be looking? We are only looking at small portion of the sky at a time. At the same time in order to send messages to other stars powerful telescopes need to be utilized. You can't simply build a telescope per star with a planet that is thought to contain life and broadcast all the time.

Thus, if civilization is not capable to monitor all of the sky at the same time with low powered telescopes and quickly point high powered telescopes when something interesting is detected, there is extremely small chance that it would be able to communicate effectively. That is retransmitting the signal to the same star is worth inherently less when compared to trying to transmit to a new star.

If interstellar travel is not viable, what we would want to do is transmit wikipedia[0] to all stars that could contain life. Traveling time for information would be long enough that we can't expect confirmation or two way communication. So what you would want to do is make a really powerful telescope beaming wikipedia to one star at a time (or many telescopes transmitting to different stars). Idea is - you do not want to repeat yourself. If you sent information once, and it have not been received, you would not want to try again for a long while. That is due to the fact that chance that civilization would develop that can listen to your signals in relatively short amount of time is unlikely. So I would say that if this is logic transmitting civilization would use then a signal would not be repeated for thousands of years.

While writing this I though of algorithm that might work better to maximize amount of civilizations you reach. This would require a relatively stable space transmitter, or series of coordinated ground transmitters:

1. Pick a set of stars S that potentially can support advanced civilization and are located closely in a region of space (so you do not have to reposition telescope a lot).

2. Start sending signals primer signals to stars. For signal S[x], temporal difference between S[x] and S[x+1] would a set amount shorter than temporal distance between S[x-1] and S[x]. Primer signals are short and cheap, transmitting entire Wikipedia should take way longer (Weeks, months, maybe years?).

3. Once time between primer signals reaches some threshold start transmitting data set.

Idea is that this will give advanced civilization potentially listening a chance to prepare to receive full transmission, while avoiding costly repeats of big data set.

[0] Wikipedia is chosen as sufficiently large volume of knowledge about human civilization that we would potentially want to transmit.

vlasev• 12 years ago

Actually, if we get to a point where we strongly suspect an alien world contains life, it would probably be a good investment to spend a lot of time pointing a telescope in its direction. I imagine almost all (useful) telescopes will point in its direction.

TrainedMonkey5• 12 years ago

Life on Earth is 3.5 billion years old. We are able to transmit and receive radio signals for barely a hundred. Aside from the issue of how we would divine if an alien world contains life, even if we did pointing most of telescopes in it's direction is most certainly a waste. Chance that somebody would be transmitting when we are listening is vanishingly small.

sillysaurus32• 12 years ago

Trying to notify intelligent life that we exist has a high probability of being the worst idea in all of human history, because there's a high probability that there will be no more human history after we meet them.

But radio emissions swiftly degrade after not too long of a distance, so unless we build some kind of extremely high-powered transmitter then any scheme like this is doomed to failure. Luckily.

Zigurd3• 12 years ago

That conjecture is much less certain than it is portrayed. Let's say we found a civilization of oyster-like creatures on a oceanic moon of a gas giant planet of a nearby star. Are we really going to go that far for a raw bar?

"Conquering" stellar civilizations only happens in space operas.

blueskin_2• 12 years ago

I don't think there's a high probability.

If an alien species has the means to reach Earth, either sublight or FTL, chances are they sorted out their own problems as a civilisation and as such, could probably teach humanity a few things.

Udo3• 12 years ago

Stephen Hawking (of all people) and Hollywood have mistakenly identified a potential desire for our resources as the main motivation for this threat scenario. But in reality there is nothing on Earth that couldn't be much easier mined in any arbitrary star system, in any arbitrary asteroid belt.

There are, however, still factors imaginable that might lead to a hostile (=genocidal) reaction from an advanced race - for example a reaction motivated by religion or paranoia. If we are within the reach of such a civilization they're already looking for us anyway though, it's unlikely additional harm will come from sending them a signal if they're already in the process of scouring the galaxy for places that are in need of a thorough ethnic cleansing.

The probability of such a scenario can currently not be estimated since we don't even have a single data point on other civilizations in our neighborhood. We don't even know if FTL is possible in practice, a technology without which an assault on Earth may very well be impractical for the foreseeable future.

One thing that might concern us, related to a potential explanation for the Fermi Paradox, is the possibility of attracting the attention of an embodied "great filter", for example in the shape of automated replicating drones that sweep the galaxy to eradicate all instances of technology they can find. But if such a filter exists, our eventual discovery will be inevitable anyway so sending an additional signal out into space would probably not make a difference.

It's difficult to construct a credible scenario where sending a signal will be instrumental in our destruction, mainly based on the assumption that interstellar civilizations or entities with the motivation to destroy us would likely not be content with sitting around on the off chance that another planet might contact them.

So who's our most likely recipient then? It's a civilization on a tech level comparable to our own. So for the sake of argument let's assume the roles are reversed:

One day we get an interstellar call. There's another inhabited star system out there, maybe not too far, let's say 200 light years away. Let's assume the worst and, upon receiving a friendly "hello" type message, the world goes completely crazy and decides the remote greeters need to DIE! At this point, there is really not much we can do to actualize that desire. We could build a huge generation ship and send it on its way but it's going to be traveling for thousands of years. When (if!) it arrives, the other civilization will either be gone or so far advanced that it's beyond the point where our puny aging low-tech generation ship can do any damage.

These are the assumptions we're operating under. Yes, they're assumptions, but for the most part they're based on the best we can do for reasoning and scientific knowledge today.

pavel_lishin2• 12 years ago

Your idea reminds me of Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness In The Sky", where an interstellar sublight civilization comes up with a STL transmission protocol: they broadcast information for free, assuming that by providing free information, they'll ensure that wherever they arrive will have a civilization that will a) have something worthwhile to trade, and b) be able to repair their ship and replace crew members.

I don't think that this would work with only one transmitter node; we need to build machines that travel to other solar systems, build receivers/transmitters there (one per system! we don't want to become a source of Aggressive Hegemonizing Swarm Objects, but rather a source of Evangelical Hegemonizing Swarm Objects), and re-broadcast from there.

(This also minimizes our chances of inviting unfriendly folks from coming down to check out who's being so noisy in the solar system.)

TrainedMonkey5• 12 years ago

I do really think everyone overestimates how bad someone finding out where we are would be. For one, unless they are right next to us (in which case they should be able to hear whatever we send already), or by the time they hear our signals hundreds of years would pass at minimum.

Even if they do hear, it would be a great deal of time before whatever they do can affect us.

strlen• 12 years ago

I loved Deepness In The Sky, one of the darkest ("Age of Failed Dreams", twentieth-century style authoritarianism coupled with technologies of the future, etc...) and yet most fascinating pieces of fiction. It's also one of the few (along with Vinge's other work) to depict distributed systems (in this sensor networks) in a realistic manner.

Couple of things to keep in mind though:

- With the exception of the spiders and two other aliens, most of the civilizations the Qeng Ho (another romanization of Zheng He, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He) are human. As a result (and based on their historical and software archives), they are able to understand what drives the civilization they deal with. Even then, however, contact with some of them turns out for the worse (The Emergents in this case) at least in the short term (and by short I here I mean decades -- human life is extended due to medical advances and suspended animation, and that's not taking into the account relativistic effects, e.g., by the time one comes back to their planet, the civilization on that planet may have already fallen).

- Qeng Ho is better termed as a culture: they're certainly not a government much less an empire. The book goes very deep into this angle and I won't go further to avoid plot spoilers.

- Relativistic time dilation ("grandfather paradox") plays a huge role here in travel. The civilizations rely on Bussards Ramjets (which seem to be impractical, magnetic sails would be more likely) and constant acceleration and then (from half-way point) deceleration: they're effectively marooned if they're unable to repair or refuel their "ram scoops", so they're taking bets that whenever they reach their target, the civilization on the other end is able to repair the ships. Again, that works well if the civilizations are human: even if the civilization has fallen into barbarism (like Pham Nuwen's home, Canberra -- where they've lost even radio and aircraft) it's possible to rebuild based on archaeology, knowledge of human nature (arranging deals and trades), and (as the parent mentioned) radio communications.

So I think this is where the analogy fails: it's possible to have an inter-stellar culture without faster than light travel or communications, but probably only as long as civilizations already familiar with each other are within light decades.

Fire Upon the Deep is quite fascinating in the sense of what is possible with FTL, although even there it seems that there are mostly cultures as opposed to empires (with Skroderiders -- the sci-fi aliens I want to meet most in real life! -- being the equivalent of Qeng Ho)

quahaug7• 12 years ago

  Scientists say that if the signal came from 
  extraterrestrials, they are likely to be an extremely 
  advanced civilization, as the signal would have required a 
  2.2-gigawatt transmitter, vastly more powerful than any on 
  Earth.

What if we inadvertently witnessed the climactic end of two rival civilizations as they unleashed massive energy weapons upon each other, due to some kind of political unraveling of a dangerous arms race?

That would certainly explain the intensity, brevity and lack of repitition for this particular signal?

One might expect residual evidence of destructive forces at work, such as a debris field or hot gas clouds, but that assumes that the weapons are of a conventional nature we might readily understand.

TrainedMonkey5• 12 years ago

Would not explain narrow spectrum nor uniform intensity of the signal.

quahaug7• 12 years ago

Consider that a specific communications channel for a civilization/culture-specific technology were being jammed, as part of a hostile operation.

mhurron• 12 years ago

Perhaps they were intending to send a signal with their shiny new super-powered transmitter and it overloaded and blew up.

They've been trying to work out the bugs in the design for the subsequent 25 years.

wglb2• 12 years ago

Being into radio, this is one of my favorite stories.

A great line from the article: "drawing vast conclusions from half-vast data". Would all HN stories avoid this as well.

duffdevice• 12 years ago

As far as I understand this article, there's no reason to believe that the signal was of constant amplitude, only that it hit Big Ear's detection threshold when we pointed directly at it. So it could have been something super non-uniform and noisy, which would make the intelligent origin seem less likely. But whatever it was, it was super loud.

Also: why haven't we built a dedicated radio telescope to just watch that spot all the time? Surely this is the biggest lead generated by the SETI program so far?

4ad• 12 years ago

The bandwidth was extremely narrow, 10kHz. That means it wasn't non-uniform, nor noisy.

acheron• 12 years ago

I read this article every so often when I remember about it. So fascinating.

Yet something we will probably never know the truth about.

cpayne• 12 years ago

I just love little stories like this. Can you imagine the emotion in the room? What it was like to see the characters and wonder WTF?

Then thinking was it an error? Did something go wrong? Is E.T. on its way?

Awesome!

johnvschmitt• 12 years ago

Someone with better #'s can correct me please, but:

With so many emitting bodies in the universe, wouldn't we expect to receive the complete works of shakespeare from ~1 remote body/month?

I mean, you could find the "WOW" signal in PI somewhere too, right?

marcosdumay2• 12 years ago

Celestial bodies are not random, otherwise the Sun could raise blue tomorrow.

pbhjpbhj• 12 years ago

Solar nucleosynthesis is deterministic?

Random doesn't mean without any limitations. You can have random variations in frequency that nonetheless remain red.

eru3• 12 years ago

With so many emitting bodies in the universe, wouldn't we expect to receive the complete works of shakespeare from ~1 remote body/month?

Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe#Matter_con...) says we have around 10^80 hydrogen atoms in the observable universe. That's a huge number, but there are 10^80 different decimal numbers with 80 digits alone. Shakespeare's works are considerably longer.

kamaal• 12 years ago

Firstly the observable universe is nothing compared to the whole universe.

Secondly what the above comment means is that with so many bodies emitting some thing random for such a long period of time. You are inevitable bound to notice something that you could make some meaning of.

And yes the 'WOW' signal is present some where in Pi.

Luyt• 12 years ago

There's a Skeptoid episode about the WoW Signal:

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4342

The podcast starts with: "It was August 15, 1977, when astronomer Jerry Ehman was examining data coming from Ohio State University's radio telescope, which was engaged in listening for signals from deep space, hoping to find something of intelligent origin. In a moment that's since become one of the most famous events in astronomy, he saw a sequence of six characters on the printout — 6EQUJ5 — which caught his attention. So much so, in fact, that he circled the text, and wrote "Wow!" in the margin.

It was, apparently, a signal from outer space. It came from the direction of Sagittarius. The strength of the signal was represented by the digits 0-9 and the letters A-Z, a scale of 36 levels of intensity, rising with 6EQ and falling with UJ5, a near-perfect bell curve of signal strength spread over 72 seconds. All speculation and hype aside, Wow! remains the strongest candidate ever detected for an alien radio transmission."

hernan604• 12 years ago

in the middle of so many 1, 3 and 2s, to see a 6EQUJ5 plus a 6 and a 7 is sure a "Wow signal"!

lukifer• 12 years ago

My pet hypothesis: with the vast scale of the universe and the light-speed limitation, when it comes to potential conversational partners, the universe selects in favor of extremely long-lived life-forms (possibly "artificial"). Such life forms would be only be interested in interacting on highly protracted time scales; think "Space Ents". Given also that sending signals into deep space is extremely expensive and energy will always be finite, communication with new worlds is sought only rarely, perhaps one targeted ping per world every 10,000 years, each an attempt to start a dialogue to be carried out laboriously over millions of years.

etfb• 12 years ago

I have two hypotheses, both untestable (and therefore worthless):

1. The distance between stars is too huge, so there has to be a trick to beating it easily, like FTL travel or wormholes, because otherwise it's just crap.

2. If any supervillains want to destroy the universe, they're too late: it's already been done, and this is all that's left.

ckoepp• 12 years ago

Given also that sending signals into deep space is extremely expensive and energy will always be finite, communication with new worlds is sought only rarely.

I totally agree to this statement. Even though I guess there is no need to actively sent too many information out in space as we do already have a kind of "frequency pollution" broadcasting TV channels, TCP packets etc. There are many signals travelling from earth to space all the time - communication with satellites doesn't end on them, remember: it's radio we use for communication!

You can easily imagine what it must be outta there when aiming at the earth with some kind of antenna: just imagine a world on which air isn't throttling voice-signals (aka shouting/talking). Those signals would keep floating around until they are reflected by some kind of object. Well, in space there aren't that many objects so our little earth is already looking like a big frequency mess and a kind of big light bulb for other guys out there. We just have to wait until all our civilization-generated signals are arriving at other parts of the galaxy.'

You can argue whether this is a wise thing to do this so naively but it's already too late to stop this from happening and to be honest: we can only do assumptions based on things we do know, so we simply have to speculate when it comes to aliens. The only thing which makes me a kind of sad is, that we humans seem to had a quite clear pattern when it comes to "exploration" of new geographical areas by external people (Northern/Southern American Natives, Africans, Australian Natives the list goes on and on). In this sense it's quite good that space-travels are that hard to do over a fast distance.

Just my 2 cents :)

Wow signal

Related Stories