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Wow! Signal
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| Talisman | Date: Saturday, 28.01.2012, 22:14 | Message # 1 |
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| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal
Thoughts on that?
I thought this was pretty interesting as well:
Quote "It is worth noting that the two different values given for the frequency of the Wow! signal (1420.356 MHz and 1420.4556 MHz) are the same distance apart to the hydrogen line - the first being about 0.0498 MHz less than the hydrogen line, and the second being about 0.0498 MHz more than the hydrogen line. The bandwidth of the signal is less than 10 kHz (each column on the printout corresponds to a 10 kHz-wide channel; the signal is only present in one column)."
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| SpaceEngineer | Date: Sunday, 29.01.2012, 00:09 | Message # 2 |
 Author of Space Engine
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| I think that was a glitch. Some earth-based interference, like an electrical discharge or short-circuit. Or bug in their hardware.
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| TwoNybble | Date: Monday, 30.01.2012, 01:06 | Message # 3 |
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| How would you explain the signal being precisely 72 seconds long, the exact amount of time the dishes would pick up the signal for before Earth's rotation moved them completely out of range? Surely the chances of a glitch being precisely that amount of time are very low. Especially since this event only occurred once. You would think that a bug would have revealed itself at least more than once in its years of use.
And disregarding a glitch, it has been found that the signal being of Earth or even solar system origin is extremely unlikely for many reasons, some of which are outlined in the Wikipedia page.
I'm not saying it absolutely could not be a glitch or coincidence, cause it certainly could be. But personally, I believe that it may have been some kind of extrasolar radio source, or possibly reflection of our own radio, although this is unlikely. Whether it is of artificial origin or not.... I don't know, but I certainly hope it is haha! 
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| Talisman | Date: Monday, 30.01.2012, 03:36 | Message # 4 |
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| Quote (DeathFromBelow) Here's a bit from Carl Sagan's book 'Pale Blue Dot' about the findings of the META search program (sorry about the wall of text):
That was a really good read, I need to buy that book.
Quote (DeathFromBelow)
advanced civilizations all over the galaxy then somebody should have stumbled over us by now.
Why? Surely you've played Space Engine and know what the issue here is. It's space .
As far as we know it's impossible to travel faster then the speed of light, which means that even if there are millions of space faring civilizations you would have more of a chance to win the lottery 20 times in a row then encounter another sentient race in our tiny timescale.
As TwoNybble noted, It seems very unlikely to be a "glitch" in the system due to its characteristics but who knows.
Edited by Talisman - Monday, 30.01.2012, 03:42 |
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| DeathFromBelow | Date: Monday, 30.01.2012, 14:58 | Message # 5 |
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Observer
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| Because millions, if not hundreds of millions of years is a lot of time to explore, especially if some sort of self-replicating spacecraft is used. Even at speeds well below c you could send a spacecraft to every star in the Milky Way in that time frame. For example, at 10% the speed of light (which seems feasible) you could get to the center of the galaxy in 300,000 years.
Here's a fun calculator for this sort of thing:
http://janus.astro.umd.edu/astro/distance/
It's entirely possible that they're already here, or that advanced civilizations don't really care, or that intelligent life is still rare given how young the universe is. We just don't know.
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| neutronium76 | Date: Thursday, 02.02.2012, 22:07 | Message # 6 |
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| Quote (DeathFromBelow) Even at speeds well below c you could send a spacecraft to every star in the Milky Way in that time frame
Quote (DeathFromBelow) hundreds of millions of years is a lot of time to explore
Ok lets see if it is possible to visit EVERY star in our galaxy in 1 billion years by using a spacecraft capable of 0.1c with life replicating sustainability.
Lets say that our galaxy has 200 billion stars distributed within a perfectly spherical grid in a perfectly homogenous distribution pattern (which is NOT the case bytheway but anyway  ...). Lets say that these stars are seperated from each other by an average distance of 10LYs. So it would take 100 years to travel from star to star (average time not accounting for acceleration/decceleration/exploration of each solar system/ resource gathering/ ship maintenance etc)
so in 1 billion years you would have managed to travel (You Hlander  ) 1,000,000,000/100(per star) = 10,000,000 stars
200,000,000,000-10,000,000 = 199,990,000,000 remaining to be explored. If somebody could doublecheck cause I am not good in maths 
AS somebody argued in the "infinity'' project forums: Even if you could travel to every star in the galaxy every second, you would die before you could visit them all...
PS: Ahh all these made me soo soo depressed again... 
PC1:Core i7 970@3.34GHz, 6 cores/12 threads, 12GB DDR3 RAM@1.34GHz, 2x(SLI) GTX-580 GPUs 3GB VRAM(GDDR5)@1GHz, OS:Win7x64SP1
PC2:Core2Quad X9770@3.2GHz, 2 cores/4 threads 4GB DDR2 RAM@1GHz, GTX-285 GPU 1GB VRAM(DDR3)@1.24GHz, OS:WinVistax64SP2
Edited by neutronium76 - Thursday, 02.02.2012, 22:20 |
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| SpaceEngineer | Date: Friday, 03.02.2012, 11:12 | Message # 7 |
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| neutronium76, did you hear about von Neumann machine concept? This is a self-replicating automatic spaceship. Once it reaches a star system, it collects data and sends it home. After that, it starts gathering resources and builds a new von Neumann machine. Then it goes to the next star, and the newly built ship goes off to another. In that star system they replicate themself again, and agian, and again. They reproduce like bacteria, their number growing exponentially as they move through the galaxy. Starting with the single ship, we will have 2 ships after 100 years, 4 ships after 200, 8 after 400, and 200 billions ships after 3754 years. We can even reduce the replicating rate. It takes 100*100,000 = 10 million years to cross the galaxy, but we already have 200 billions ships after the first few thousands years, so every ship can be sent directly to every star in the galaxy.
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| Talisman | Date: Friday, 03.02.2012, 19:59 | Message # 8 |
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| The Von Neumann concept is pretty cool, but I just can't imagine how advanced a civilization would be if they can create probes that are able to seek out asteroids in another solar system, and then mine them for the minerals needed to create another probe, imagine all the fine metals that would have to be extracted and how much time it would take to fly around examining all the asteroids or planets for the required materials to build another.
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| SpaceEngineer | Date: Friday, 03.02.2012, 21:39 | Message # 9 |
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| Quote (Talisman) and how much time it would take to fly around examining all the asteroids or planets for the required materials to build another.
Even if it takes 1000 years, von Neumann probes allows a clivilization to explore the whole galaxy as quickly as possible - the limit is only interstellar flight speed and back data transfering speed (it works with FTL drive technology too).
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| Talisman | Date: Friday, 03.02.2012, 22:01 | Message # 10 |
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| Quote (SpaceEngineer) Even if it takes a 1000 years, von Neumann probes allows a clivilization to explore the whole galaxy as quickly as possible - limit is only interstellar flight speed and back data transfering speed (it works with FTL drive technology too).
Yes of course. That is the most efficient way to fully explore a galaxy.
Perhaps there are one or two different von neumann probes mining our asteroid belt at this very moment. 
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| SpaceEngineer | Date: Saturday, 04.02.2012, 11:05 | Message # 11 |
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| Quote (Talisman) Perhaps there are one or two different von neumann probes mining our asteroid belt at this very moment.
Yes. I hope there is no "berserker" probes in our galaxy, which program is to find and destroy any life.
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| Talisman | Date: Saturday, 04.02.2012, 17:58 | Message # 12 |
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| Quote (SpaceEngineer) Yes. I hope there is no "berserker" probes in our galaxy, which program is to find and destroy any life.
Haha, lets hope it takes a long long time for it to gather sufficient nuclear materials from our asteroid belt needed to destroy Earth.
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