Pretty cool seeing this here. I recently met someone who works at the observatory here in the island in a Python user group meeting. I was intrigued by the kind of work he did over there with Python. But was instantly bummed out when he told me how their budget has been so dramatically cut during the past few years. There's some interesting things regarding budget, and one of the latest repairs that had to be done after an earthquake north from Puerto Rico damaged one of the suspension cables that support a 900 ton telescope platform here http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/2014/0409-arecibo...
..based on 500 public photos, taken between 2000-2014 by tourists - sadly that means the receiver moved around. So if you can capture hundreds of photos please go and upload the photos on flickr.com
The NSF has supported Arecibo for decades now, along with a bunch of other observatories (http://www.astro.cornell.edu/academics/courses/astro201/nato...). NSF has re-evaluated its commitment to these observatories and decided to pull out of several of them so they can pursue new observing opportunities, such as LSST (sky survey for transients) and ATST (solar telescope).
Some scientists are unhappy. The complaints I have heard are that these less-centralized telescopes allowed small investigations to get off the ground, and the new ones are large consortia.
The LSST is an incredible project. I toured their lab at Brookhaven and one of the lead scientists offhand commented "Yeah, the only problem so far is we're going to have to make something flatter than anyone has ever really made something flat" (referring to the CCD array).
> As the National Science Foundation (NSF), which owns Arecibo Observatory, cannot legally carry insurance on its facilities, there is no clear source of funding to carry out such a massive repair.
This seems so absurd. Why cant NSF facilities be insured?
I cannot understand why these kind of projects lack funding. Is there no super rich person on this planet who is obsessed with the thought of extraterrestrial life?
I think you misunderstood what I said. I only facetiously pointed out that given these projects lack funding one could conclude that there is no super rich person on this planet which cares about extraterrestrial life (e.g. as a hobby).
I was simply trying to point out that "the rest of us" could try and contribute a little more to various goals rather than rely on the super rich. Most readers here are much better off than most other people on the planet.
Wouldn't it be great if there was a better way to contribute to "citizen science", for example?
Ultimately, as evidenced by history, most super-rich reach a stage of life where they realise the riches in themselves were just a way to keep score and large philanthropic contributions ensue.
It's a serious philosophical question; once [1] family financial security and [2]a high quality of life has been secured there is very little left to spend money on other than initiatives that benefit mankind or the natural world.
Funnily enough, greed seems to occur more often in those who don't really need it anymore.
> once [1] family financial security and [2]a high quality of life has been secured
.. you stop focusing on accumulating more wealth - unless those aren't the real goals, and the driving force is something less wholesome. There are natural limits on the wealth a sane person can achieve, unless they inherit or get incredibly (un?)lucky, but numbers can keep rising long after they lost any connection to anything "real", and just like in gaming, people can get and stay stuck to that. And as long as they keep "winning", only the very best get a chance to pause and reflect.
"Most"? Certainly "some" - most is debatable. I'd like to see some numbers. There is certainly no shortage of super-rich who hit that point and... just keep going, because for those types it was never about the money - it was about the power. And while more wealth might give diminishing returns, power really doesn't, yet remains directly proportional to wealth.
(For me, this is the best reason to tax the rich - it's not about revenues per se, rather it is about avoiding extremely dense accumulations of political power.)
While I totally agree with the call for more responsibility from the rest of us, the effort require to convince, coordinate and collect such money from 1 billion people would be extraordinary. Better to convince a few people that have already done the "cash aggregation" throughout their lives :)
Certain species of cicadas have evolved a life cycle which is a prime number of years long (I know of 13 and 17 years). This prevents predators from synchronizing their life cycle to that of the cicadas.
I believe the reason for avoiding synchronization is that different swarms avoid competition for resources.
Wouldn't predators just sync up with them otherwise?
> Wouldn't predators just sync up with them otherwise?
Not easily. They need to get the frequency and phase correct, which is probably hard to do with decade long cycles. If they align with the cycle but are out of phase they never match. If they "choose" another cycle they'll only match at best at twice the period, so 30 year cycles. That probably makes it very hard for any predator species to specialize on them, although not of taking advantage of them when they do happen to be around.
That's an interesting question, which simply answered is a plain yes or no.
If they use technology as we understand it, then presumably yes. Prime numbers are just a unique artifact of basic arithmetic. Our knowledge of prime numbers appears to date back to at least Ancient Egyptian times, so it's quite safe to assume an alien race capable of something as technologically adept as transmitting a signal with the purposeful intent of contacting another race would know what prime numbers are.
The issue is we're limited to our view point, we're exceptionally naive of anything different as we've never experienced it. So, is our technology the only way?
We're designing nanotechnology that could fabricate anything we could dream of, but what if an alien race ended up evolving a unique cell that could do it too. We have white blood cells, they have nanofab cells. Would they even comprehend math if they're just growing jet engines and rocket nozzles?
It's this latter, our unknowable unknowns that will broadside us. How do we relate to something that's unfathomably alien to us.
The good news is you and I likely won't be around to care when we find out what aliens are really like.
> The good news is you and I likely won't be around to care when we find out what aliens are really like
I've never understood this sentiment. I would most certainly like to be around if and when we find this out, for better or worse. Why wouldn't you want to be?
> Do you feel despair when you step on ants on the sidewalk?
Well no, but neither do I go out of my way to step on them. And I don't see that we'll be so very, very far behind these beings that they're not even capable of recognising we're sentient. Indeed, with all their technology, they should be even more aware of the potential sentience of life than we are.
In the last 100 years or so, humanity has made great strides towards its treatment of lesser animals - we have a long way to go, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to set a goal of zero intentional animal cruelty by 2100. I'd expect technologically advanced aliens to be similarly advanced ethically, or if they do wipe us out, it would at least be deliberate (eg 'the killing star' logic).
Most of the pessimistic alien-encounter scenarios involve the aliens' wiping us out for reasons of convenience. They need our resources, and we're either pointless or competitive to keep around.
Personally, I find that argument a little naive and anthropocentric. Who's to say they need our resources? Couldn't they find resources aplenty in asteroids, on planets closer to their home, or through artificial synthesis? It makes little economic or biological sense to go through the trouble of exploring vast, deep regions of space purely for the purposes of acquiring resources. (And that's even assuming they need the same resources we do, in the first place.)
In all likelihood, an alien intelligence that made itself deliberately known to us would be doing it for scientific or diplomatic reasons. If they want our planet, they could just take it. There'd be no need even to deal with us; they could just lob a few asteroid-sized objects at our planet, eradicate life on the surface, then come in and harvest away.
To your point: any sufficiently advanced intelligence that's going to bother interacting with us will probably have studied us well in advance. It will know as much as it can about us. It might (depending on its alien mindset) have a good understanding of our potential sentience, and a respect for sentience in general.
The real threat isn't from alien intelligence, but from alien AI. A dumb AI, at that, of the kind that mindlessly travels the galaxy, self-replicates, and harvests material without discrimination. But again: a race advanced enough to develop such technology would probably be aware of the consequences of letting it run amok. There would be checks against that scenario by design.
We're very quick to ascribe a bleak, law-of-the-jungle amorality to alien intelligence. But let's think about it. Such an intelligence had many "tests" to pass: a nuclear age (or some equivalent thereof), climate change (or some equivalent thereof), wars, and so forth. If it's far more advanced than we are, it probably passed and survived all those tests to get there. It's very hard to pass those tests in the absence of a complex, well-developed ethical system.
>The real threat isn't from alien intelligence, but from alien AI. A dumb AI, at that, of the kind that mindlessly travels the galaxy, self-replicates, and harvests material without discrimination. But again: a race advanced enough to develop such technology would probably be aware of the consequences of letting it run amok. There would be checks against that scenario by design.
Don't have too much confidence in that. If a civilization creates AI, it could possibly improve itself and become incredibly intelligent, but still keep the simple goals that it was originally programmed with. Thus endlessly self-replicating, consuming the universe to create bigger computers, or destroy threats to itself, or preserve it's existence as long as possible.
Its interesting to think how we would react if we encounter a superior alien race. It completely changes everything.
Frankly, I don't think it would end well at all (even if they are benign). We are too smart/proud to let someone set the rules for us, not after being at the top of the food chain for so long.
People do go out of their way to step on ants, because they are pests. If aliens see us as competition for resources or a potential threat in the distant future, it might be better to eliminate us now.
There is no such thing as "advanced ethics". Our human sense of morality evolved under our specific evolutionary conditions. Aliens would be completely different. Even worse, they could be taken over by Paperclip Maximizers (http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer).
Further to your point about treatment of animals, I imagine that our best and brightest would be at the forefront of any equivalent transport and communication. And I think they'd be more likely to carefully consider their treatment of animals than the average person amongst us.
You're being naive. We mass produce animals for slaughter.
Those ants are pests, I pour boiling water down their holes and leave poison around my house because once in a while a few get on my counter, or they cover the sidewalk when they go to war with each other. I have a pet rabbit, vermin, but I put out mouse traps.
An alien species entire reason for making us extinct or pushing us back to the dark ages might be as petty as because we were a visual nuisance, or like Douglas Adams suggested: we got in the way of road construction.
If they were directing the design they would be pretty likely to have abstractions. If you are making designs utilizing abstractions you are probably trying to maximize their effectiveness, which sort of naturally leads to at least some math.
Yes. Prime numbers are fundamental features of the universe. Fundamental things that are global rather than local; Mathematics, the periodic table, physical constants, physics, chemistry, no doubt others that don't occur to me instantaneously. Things that might be local only include biology ....
On the other hand there might be the possibility of the existence of Kardashev type ≥0 civilizations that skipped our level of intelligence in their evolution and to which basic number theory is so trivial that it’s not worth mentioning, just like the concept of addition is trivial for us.
It's abstractly possible, but you have to tell one hell of a Just So story to get them there. Foreign life forms are embedded in the same physics we are, and most likely experienced the same basic life-and-death fight for every resource that our species did before our intelligence explosion. There's many ways they can be different than us, but there's a lot of ways that any intelligence embedded in the same universe as us must be the same, too. I think people get stars in their eyes and put way too much focus on the former quite often.
Possibly. We should keep in mind that our knowledge of number theory is very limited. They are probably not really interested because it's all really obvious to them -- and has been for quite a while. It's quite amusing to think about how they might laugh at our encryption systems relying on simple discrete logarithm-problems etc. Not unlike we laugh at Julius Ceasar for relying on simple substitution.
Julius Caesar didn't have number theory nor computers so his cypher was actually pretty sound.
We have a pretty good idea about the limits of encryption. I doubt advanced aliens would have much to laugh about our current state of our encryption systems.
Considering that most people couldn't even read regular text back then it was definitely pretty sound, but that's not really my point.
We do? Got any references for that? Take RSA -- it's not even proven that breaking it is equivalent with integer factorization. Even if it was, there are no proof that integer factorization needs to be time consuming at all, there might very well exist an algorithm with polynomial complexity.
I imagine they would at least recognize that it's a handy tool for communicating intelligence. "This signal is not an accident. Pay attention to this signal."
Ha! Of COURSE they do! Didn't you know? We got OUR interests in prime numbers from aliens, and they are still interested, e.g., still trying to find an algorithm to factor integers that runs in O(n) for an integer of n decimal digits. Why decimal? I know the answer, but there is no room in this post for me to write it down!
And for 'The Book', Paul Erdős, that was from aliens, too. Why? Sure, could there be any doubt, Erdős was one of them!
With the estimate that the distance to the source is 3 billion light years, what would the energy at the source have been? How much energy are we talking?
How much red shift are we talking? So, at the source, at what frequencies was most of the energy from?
What happened to the other frequencies, lower, higher, or much higher? We do believe that gamma rays can travel 3 billion light years without being absorbed or deflected, right?
Let's see a sky map of the estimated locations of the dozen or so signals so far?
Great link. Can someone with a bit more expertise elaborate on this part -
> Normally, radio waves travel at the speed of light. This means that all the different wavelengths and frequencies of radio waves emitted by the same object – say, a pulsar – should arrive on Earth in one big batch.
As someone not particularly well-schooled in physics; I envisage quite simply that if I turn on a radio then off again then on again - the two transmissions arrive separately at another source.
Is that not the same for extra/intergalactic transmissions? If an external transmitter broadcast continual signals would earth not receive them with time delays between each one?
HN must have a science grad that can explain why I am mistaken.
The phrasing of that section isn't entirely clear, but I think the idea is a little simpler than what you're imagining.
What the article means is that if you have a single, very short emission of waves with a combination of multiple frequencies, then in principle an observer ought to observe all of the emitted waves arrive at the same time, regardless of frequency. (Traveling the same distance at the same velocity should mean arrival at the same time, after all.)
In this case, though, they see the radio-frequency equivalent of a short blue flash first and later a short green flash and then a short red flash (and presumably all gradations in between, all blurred into one event of gradually decreasing frequency). The notion (as I understand it: not my specialty) is that the longer wavelengths get slowed down a bit more as they pass through galactic and/or intergalactic dust, so their speed is lower.
Now, what you're probably wondering is, "Why do they think it's a single short event that's gotten 'smeared out' during travel rather than a longer event that continuously changed wavelengths as it happened at the source?" I don't know the answer for sure, but astronomers have a lot of practice in recognizing these things. One possibility is pulse shape: if the pattern of brightening and dimming of the "blue" light looks exactly the same as the patterns for the "green" and "red" light, it's more likely that it came from a single source event rather than a continuous process.
Steuard is right, and astronomers have good reasons to expect this behaviour - wave dispersion. The best link I can find from a quick google is this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispersion_(water_waves)
-which refers specifically to dispersion of water (typically, ocean) waves, but the concepts are the same.
(Edited to add) We expect dispersion effects in the case of fast radio bursts due to effects of propagation through the interstellar medium. Not my area of expertise, but see http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.8316 if you want a properly referenced starting point.
Maybe it's worth mentioning that we're all at least a little bit familiar with dispersion in other contexts: it's the same phenomenon that makes a prism work to split white light into colors, and that is responsible for rainbows. (The angle that light bends when passing through a surface depends on the precise speed that light of that frequency travels on each side. When different frequencies have different speeds, that's dispersion, and what started as combined white light splits into a different color at each angle.)
That was one point where I wasn't sure quite how to talk about this. In the back of my mind, I have a sense that "gets deflected more" (meaning "longer distance") is actually referring to the same fundamental process that "gets slowed down more" (in the sense of index of refraction: v=c/n) refers to: either way, the time to pass through the medium is longer than it would take to pass through an equally large vacuum region. But I wasn't quite confident enough to phrase it that way in my main reply.
Thanks! (I'm a physics professor, so explaining stuff like this is pretty much my job. But my specialty is string theory, which is pretty far removed from radio astronomy!)
The text you quote says is that if you turn your radio transmitter on, and broadcast on a lot of different frequencies, and turn your radio off - all the different frequencies arrive simultaneously too(since you transmitted them simultaneously). It will of course arrive some time after you transmit it, since the signal travels at the speed of light.
tldr; It's just saying that a low frequency signal travels just as fast as a high frequency signal.
Sure - but if you bounce a radio signal off a wall to the side, then turn it off and on to send a signal straight at an observer, the time difference to the observer is not the same as the one to the transmitter.
Shows you that the amount of what we know about the universe is likely less than what we don't. I've always thought that mind boggling discoveries that change our understanding of the universe is the only constant in it.
The events are too short and too powerful for even Star Trek-like weapons :)
It's clear from the article that the amount of energy required for these bursts would be far in excess of what could be considered practical - even for planet-scope warfare. There is no characteristic gamma pulse which would be expected from an antimatter annihilation, and the pulse length is not exactly what we would expect from this type of weapon either.
ok ok ok - stop with the downvotes, it was a silly joke.
But, as Udo kindly did, if we took it seriously, what would a civilisation have to do for us to detect its (warlike) actions and if we did, more importantly, would we believe it?
