Anyone else come across this?

[Stonius (Markus)]

I dont know how reputable the independant is, or the Journal of Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (probably not very). But theyre saying in their paper that this signal is 'probably aliens'. Seems like a rather big call to make, failing any other evidence. They do mention the authors, the university they hail from, and the journal they published in. Im overseas at the moment, so i havent gone scrounging for its citation index.


Strange messages coming from the stars are ‘probably’ from aliens, scientists say

-Markus

[leon]

Thanks for posting , but it sounds like a bit of "Hocus Pocus" to me Markus, but who am i to say.
I am not a believer in Aliens.

Leon

[julianh72 (Julian)]

The Berkeley SETI Campaign already looked at this, and rates it a Zero to One (None to Insignificant) on a Ten-point scale:
https://seti.berkeley.edu/bl_sdss_seti_2016.pdf

The one in 10,000 objects with unusual spectra seen by Borra and Trottier are certainly worthy of additional study. However, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It is too early to unequivocally attribute these purported signals to the activities of extraterrestrial civilizations. Internationally agreed-upon protocols for searches for evidence of advanced life beyond Earth (SETI) require candidates to be confirmed by independent groups using their own telescopes, and for all natural explanations to be exhausted before invoking extraterrestrial agents as an explanation. Careful work must be undertaken to determine false positive rates, to rule out natural and instrumental explanations, and most importantly, to confirm detections using two or more independent telescopes.

Peaks in Fourier analysis of stellar spectra, such as those discussed by Borra and Trottier, can be caused by instrumental optics or introduced during data reduction. Data artifacts, fringing, and inconsistencies in the manufacture of detectors are known to users of high resolution spectrographs to cause minute patterns to appear in the resulting spectra. The movement of the telescope, variations in observing conditions, and the process of wavelength calibration can easily introduce undesired signals at levels that are only barely detectable. It is therefore important to check the claimed signal using a different telescope and instrument.

Nevertheless, they've put a few of the Borra / Trottier candidate stars on a "watch list", and it will be interesting to see if any independent measurements show anything out of the ordinary.

[AussieTrooper (Ben)]

Incredibly unlikely.
If every time something that was discovered and not fully understood was labelled aliens, we could pretty much erase our entire star charts and fill them back in with "Here be little green men."

[xelasnave]

Follow the money.
Alex

[GeoffW1 (Geoff)]

Originally Posted by xelasnave

Follow the money.
Alex

I did, and when I got there it was all gone

[el_draco (Rom)]

Originally Posted by xelasnave

Follow the money.
Alex

By that candle, "all politicians are aliens...." Ooh, ah, hush my politically incorrect mouth

[Shiraz (Ray)]

got to give credit - it is ingenious. However, https://www.newscientist.com/article...r-human-error/

[xelasnave]

Originally Posted by el_draco

By that candle, "all politicians are aliens...." Ooh, ah, hush my politically incorrect mouth

I recall a gov gift of millions for poor African kids to get vaccinated, a wonderful thing but when I followed the money it went to some drug company os.
Anyways the project keeps people fed and occupied so its all good.
Alex

[yoda776 (Matt)]

Thanks for the link and it does seem to be lacking more substantive academic evidence and on some pretty big assumptions. Time will tell as all theories are usually tested and either proved or disproved I guess.

Or may be they have been looking through the data too much and gone nuts

Originally Posted by Shiraz

got to give credit - it is ingenious. However, https://www.newscientist.com/article...r-human-error/

[Shiraz (Ray)]

Originally Posted by yoda776

Thanks for the link and it does seem to be lacking more substantive academic evidence and on some pretty big assumptions. Time will tell as all theories are usually tested and either proved or disproved I guess.

Or may be they have been looking through the data too much and gone nuts

yes, it is a bit of a worry to see that they transformed the data from wavelength to frequency, using interpolation to essentially make up some missing data, and then found some anomalies when they applied an FFT. However, the idea looks to be sound - they just may possibly have something - lets see if any signals can be detected by other means now that they have identified the stars of interest.

[bojan]

Paper here:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.03031