Is existence of E.T.’s the newest “consensus science?”
New scientific report theorizes that strange signals show intelligent life in distant star cluster.
In reference to Election 2016, I have recently observed that the best proof of intelligent extraterrestrial life is the fact that none of it has wanted to actually contact us, yet.
However, a new scientific report theorizes that strange modulations among a small star cluster may be be coming from extraterrestrial intelligence that is looking to alert us to their existence.
The new study reports the finding of specific modulations in just 234 out of the 2.5 million stars that have been observed during a survey of the sky. The work found that a tiny fraction of them seemed to be behaving strangely.
…“We find that the detected signals have exactly the shape of an [extraterrestrial intelligence] signal predicted in the previous publication and are therefore in agreement with this hypothesis,” write EF Borra and E Trottier in a new paper. “The fact that they are only found in a very small fraction of stars within a narrow spectral range centered near the spectral type of the sun is also in agreement with the ETI hypothesis,” the two scientists from Laval University in Quebec write.
The research has appeared in the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, under the title ‘Discovery of peculiar periodic spectral modulations in a small fraction of solar type stars’.
For those with inquiring minds, a copy of the pre-print version of this report is available from the Cornell University online library.
But not all scientists are rushing to join in the consensus that the signals are from space aliens! Scientists at Berkeley SETI Research Center says that more data is needed, and it is far to early to make this projection:
“[E]xtraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” the organization wrote in a statement. “It is too early to unequivocally attribute these purported signals to the activities of extraterrestrial civilizations.”
…Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, told Astronomy magazine that he was “quite skeptical” of the hypothesis.
“Apparently several — more than three or four — referees have been disinclined to see this published,” he said in an email to Astronomy.
I sure wish they would use this level of skepticism when discussing global warming!
Interestingly, a piece of an exotic aluminum alloy that appears to be the product of advanced technology was recently discovered in Romania. This find, determined to be 250,000-year-old in one test, is being used as evidence that aliens once visited Earth.
According to tests, the object is made of 12 metals, 90% aluminium, and it was dated by Romanian officials as being 250,000 years old. The initial results were later confirmed by a lab in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Other experts who conducted later tests said the dates were far alter, ranging between 400 and 80,000 years old, but even at 400 years old it would still be 200 years earlier than when aluminium was first produced.
Well, if there are extra-terrestrials around, I am fairly certain that the Democrats will find a way to register them to vote by Nov. 8th!
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Comments
Leslie, you’ve been in California too long.
I could not find an estimate of the distance that the stars are but suspect they are at least thousands of light years if not tens of thousands of light years away. Which means that the signals would have been generated thousands/ten thousands of years ago.
I’m not sure an advanced civilization would want to advertise it’s presence anyway. Who knows what they would attract.
“Leslie, you’ve been in California too long.”
Yes…yes I have. I am looking forward to moving to another of our 57 states once my son is up-and-out. However, thanks to Big Government’s impact on young lives, I may be here….forever.
I’m not sure an advanced civilization would want to advertise it’s presence anyway. Who knows what they would attract.
Tell that to the Voyager team, who put a solid-gold (because gold is less likely to corrode) LP of “Earth sounds” and directions to our sun and planet on the side of the probe.
Or are you saying humans aren’t “advanced” enough?
Unfortunately, the Voyager team didn’t solicit wiser advice before settling on the plan to leave an incriminating trail of bread crumbs back home.
Because of the idiot precursor to global warming “scientists”, Carl Sagan.
Fortunately, before Voyager is even found, human civilization will either die off or be less vulnerable.
Was the sound Little Joe and the Familia? If so, they are not aliens.
If indeed they are a sign of intelligent life, it makes the Fermi Paradox even more paradoxical. 234 stars in this galaxy (they wouldn’t be able to detect signals from other galaxies) showing signs of intelligent life able to beam signals, and therefore, presumably able to build spacecraft. Yet, none of them are here yet, and we aren’t them. 234 is about 5X what most people using the Greenbank Equation or similar guesstimating sequences come up with. And IF intelligent life were that common, it’s an almost mathematical certainty at least one would have occupied the entire galaxy by now.
And we have no way of knowing whether one of them HAS already occupied the entire galaxy. We still haven’t even been able to confirm that other planets are habitable, never mind whether some other race has colonized them.
For all we know the Sol system is actually a nature preserve to allow humans to develop naturally until they’re ready to be absorbed by the Culture.
That piece of exotic aluminum sure looks a lot like a tooth from an excavator bucket.
That could be. I think time travel will be viable before visiting civilizations across the universe.
But I’m more inclined to believe in multiverses along the space-time continuum.
I believe life exists in the universe beyond our own solar system. It is really impossible that it wouldn’t exist.
But why would extraterrestrial beings care about visiting earth? If they could get here, we are probably too primitive for them to be interested.
Plus, why all the different spaceships? You wouldn’t build dozens of different type, size, and shaped ships and send them all out into the universe. You would find a design that works and build them. Maybe improve them over the decades and centuries, but not orbs one day and saucers the next.
Just sayin’
The SETI folks are correct. It is far too early to center on such an explanation for the observations. This is a very common practice in research, wherein the occasional scientist will place hopes before evidence and make declarations later regretted. A good example is the Fleischman-Pons experiment wherein they claimed to have proved cold fusion. They were grossly premature in their claim. Study of their experiment protocols and attempts to replications of their work showed they were just wrong. So how could otherwise honest and skilled scientists make such an egregious error? The human element, greed for money and prestige. As stated at the link below, if their were true, it “could have delivered the largest economic shock to the global energy industry since the Pennsylvania oil rush.” In other words, a monumentally historic leap forward for mankind. Powerful stuff.
Likewise, some scientists who have an emotional investment in the existence of aliens can read too much into the evidence. It’s a bit like the ‘God did it’ process, where if science has not yet established the cause of an observed effect, religious believers would plug in God, known as the God of the Gaps argument. Switch out God for Aliens and that’s what you have here – since science has not yet explained the cause of the received signals, then the pro-alien scientists get to plug in Aliens.
Science acknowledges it may well be aliens.. or one of an unknownable number of other possibilities, so let the scientific method work its way through it.
Proof of aliens claimed by scientists is a very common thing, going on all the time. Often the descriptive ‘scientist’ is loosely applied. Every discipline has it’s fringe. Well, except lawyers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleischmann%E2%80%93Pons_experiment
And we have no way of knowing whether one of them HAS already occupied the entire galaxy. We still haven’t even been able to confirm that other planets are habitable, never mind whether some other race has colonized them.
For all we know the Sol system is actually a nature preserve to allow humans to develop naturally until they’re ready to be absorbed by the Culture.
Meant that to be a reply above, reposted.
Site seriously needs an edit/delete button.
Hell, this site needs an edit/delete/I’m sober now button.
That would sort-of ruin it. As is, there’s a dandy excuse for leaving the damnedest stuff up.
Isn’t that a Twilight Zone plot, humans as specimens for alien zoos?
First, sorry Henry. I hit the down button by mistake.
The Twilight Zone I remember is the alien who came to Earth with a book entitled “To Serve Man.” Of course, everyone thought that it was wonderful how giving the aliens were going to be until one smart human figured out that it was a recipe book!
I am sure that the alien was played by Ted Cassidy, the Lurch of Addams Family fame.
Whoops! I was wrong. It was Richard Kiel, of James Bond fame, who played the alien.
Actually, there was a TZ in which an alien type looking suspiciously like character actor Milton Selzer tried to abduct Andy Devine, imagining him to be a “superior specimen”. Hocus-Pocus and Frisby, 1962.
And another TZ from 1960, People Are Alike All Over, with Roddy McDowall rather improbably on Mars.
There’s also a TZ episode where a man and his wife wake up after a party to find themselves in a strange house where the cabinets, drawers, etc are not functional. Outside everything is fake, yet they hear the giggling of an unseen child. They get on a train (where they are the only passengers) to try and escape, but the train just travels in a big circle and they wind up back where they started. It turns out that they were captured by a giant humanoid who took them as a novelty for his kid’s doll house ~
I like the TZ ep where the grandmotherly lady living alone out in the sticks has a battle to the death with miniature aliens less than six inches tall.
BTW, the best evidence for the existence of intelligent aliens is homo sapiens – humans. We are proof that life, even intelligent beings, can exist on a planet in this galaxy, or universe. Beyond that, there is zilch as yet for evidence.
I wrote a short story about the discovery of alien intelligence, from a more likely, anticlimatic viewpoint. The discovery is first made not by radio communication, not by ships over the White House, not by telescopic observation, but by the simple discovery of an alien monkey wrench found on Europa, a moon of Jupiter, in a location to which no human has ever been. In my story, it’s another thousand years before our first face to face contact.
Yeah, saw this. The story remains distinctly uninformative. Why reporters who couldn’t even spell science without consulting their ouija boards feel qualified to write about this stuff is the only real mystery here.
strange modulations among a small star cluster
Ahhh, modulations of what? A modulation is a change you make to some periodic signal.
Ooh! Ooh! And here’s the answer—
We find that the detected signals have exactly the shape of an [extraterrestrial intelligence] signal predicted in the previous publication
There! Modulations in a chain of circular reasoning. Brilliant! I’m sure their Nobel Prize is already in the mail.
Good of them to post the paper … I suppose. If you don’t know what a Fourier transform analysis is, don’t invest the time; better to do something productive, like playing FreeCell.
Saw this one too. Also not terribly informative—
and it was dated by Romanian officials as being 250,000 years old.
And how did they date it? In general, it’s very difficult to get any indication of age from metals. Sometimes it’s possible if there are radioisotopes involved. But not much chance of getting any of those with a light atomic mass element like aluminum; you get that stuff mostly around iron-56 and heavier. If the 11 other metals cited included something heavier, it would be useful to know.
if there are extra-terrestrials around, I am fairly certain that the Democrats will find a way to register them to vote by Nov. 8th!
No need for them to actually be around to register them. Just like dead people.
Yeah, saw this. The story remains distinctly uninformative. Why reporters who couldn’t even spell science without consulting their ouija boards feel qualified to write about this stuff
So basically a reporter who has the same qualifications that the average reporter has.
:strange modulations among a small star cluster
Ahhh, modulations of what? A modulation is a change you make to some periodic signal.
The only things detected at this distance are light and gravitational radiation. Our gravitational radiation detectorss aren’t sophistcated enough. So it’s light.
Good of them to post the paper … I suppose. If you don’t know what a Fourier transform analysis is, don’t invest the time;
When you have a fairly well behaved function, it can be boren apart into a sum of periodical functions of different frequncies. A fourier analysis is simply a plot of frequency versus amplitude at that frequency. To me though it’s not clear what the x and y of the original function is. To figure that out I would have to read the other papers.
Another good reason to vote for Trump. He’ll build a wall to keep the aliens out.
A yuuuge wall.
😀
‘To Serve Man’ is the episode you’re thinking of. And it wasn’t a zoo. They basically set up Earth as a cattle farm.
They did a few episodes with somewhat similar alien themes.
Several episodes featured alien invaders of some variety – ‘The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street’ most famously. ‘Black Leather Jackets’ had aliens getting ready to wipe out the earth’s population so they could colonize it. ‘Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up’ had both a Martian and a Venusian planning to set up outposts on Earth
Mr Dingle, The Strong, had aliens running clandestine experiments on humans.
Probe 7 – Over and Out, had the original Adam and Eve as alien astronauts marooned on Earth. ‘Third From The Sun’ also had aliens planning to flee to Earth.
Those are just off the top of my head. Damn Twilight Zone is still awesome 55 years later.
Naw, there’s another TZ ep where humans are taken to alien home planet and locked up in mockups of human homes, while aliens gawk at them just like at a zoo.
Off topic but my favorite is Night of the Meek
LI science fiction fans revealed! Count me in. I love it, from Lovecraft to Dick. (As in Phillip K.).
The aluminum alloy thing has already been debunked. Not going to bother with details – google it – but the short version is the dating of metals is notoriously unreliable. A margin of 400 to 250,000 should have been your first tell.
As for alien civs, others upthread are spot on re Time being the limiting factor. As an Antaran, I can’t begin to relate how frustrating and lonely its been to hear the *history* of other alien species that we could never meet because they went extinct long before their signals entered our skies.
And yes, you Earthlings are indeed alien to this planet. Remember how your own colonists brought livestock to the New World? It was kinda like that with you. Sorry, but a girl’s gotta eat.
As soon as this makes it to the drooling fanboys on I F*king Love Science it will be touted as a factual eyewitness account.
This all reminds me of a report that came out years ago about how a college professor of linguistics or something related discovered writings on a large rock outcropping in a Scandinavian harbor. He spent years studying the markings and determined that it was written in an ancient lost language and detailed the exploits of a prince as he tried to save his kingdom.
>
It was all quite impressive until a geologist looked at the rock outcroppings and said the markings were actually nothing more than obvious weathering marks brought about by the endless freeze thaw cycles characteristic of the region. The work was never discussed again in the literature.
The vast numbers are irrelevant. Most of the universe has been, and continues to be sterilized by supernova explosions, gamma ray bursts, red giant star expansion, meteor impacts, neutron stars and black holes.
That said, those signals are those of aliens just as Obama was a Constitutional law professor, and Hillary Clinton is the smartest woman in America.
“Most of the universe has been, and continues to be sterilized by supernova explosions, gamma ray bursts, red giant star expansion, meteor impacts, neutron stars and black holes.”
A fact seemingly lost in the “scientific” community.
I believe there is a correlation between “global warming” science and “aliens exist” science.
Not that I don’t believe in aliens mind you. I suspect several comment here at LI. You know who you are…