[HN Gopher] Amateur astronomer Alberto Caballero finds possible ...
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Amateur astronomer Alberto Caballero finds possible source of Wow
signal
Author : dnetesn
Score : 56 points
Date : 2020-11-25 11:40 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Wouldn't the power at the source of such a signal be so great as
| to cause harm to nearby life? If the "wow" signal actually
| originated from 2MASS 19281982-2640123, whatever life that may
| have been there is now probably gone.
| imglorp wrote:
| 2MASS 19281982-2640123 is 1800 light years away. Eh, maybe if
| ET has solved war and politics, they're still there. But it
| also implies WOW was not a response to our RF emissions, which
| are reaching at most 130 LY out today. This raises other
| questions. Were they broadcasting to every habitable planet in
| sight? We did that briefly.
| geocrasher wrote:
| And just three years ago somebody said with the same amount of
| confidence that it was a comet:
|
| https://phys.org/news/2017-06-wow-mystery-space.html
|
| I think that if a person goes looking hard enough for the answer
| they want, they'll find it.
| prewett wrote:
| At least the comet hypothesis has some actual data to back it
| up, and the data matches the Wow! data. This current one
| assumes the signal must be from intelligent life and found a
| candidate that might possibly have intelligent life that might
| possibly have caused the Wow! signal, with no explanation for
| why said (possibly existing) intelligent life has not caused
| any additional signals since then. At least the comet
| explanation offers an explanation that fits the facts.
| heyflyguy wrote:
| articles that end too soon...
| mabbo wrote:
| This isn't good science.
|
| Caballero went looking for a specific answer- a planet in the
| right place in the sky, with the right conditions- and found it.
| Therefore, this is proof the signal came from ET intelligence,
| right? But in science you should be going the opposite direction-
| start with the data and see what answer it leads to.
|
| What's more, there's a big region of space the signal could have
| come from. Saying "any planet in that cone is the answer" isn't
| fair. There's just as likely to be thousands or millions more
| planets with equal properties further away inside the same cone.
|
| A more fair experiment would be to say "ignoring the specific
| direction the 'Wow' signal came from, predict where it should
| have come from given the data we have"- and then if you find an
| answer that aligns with the source of the 'Wow', then you're onto
| something.
| consp wrote:
| True, but he states in the paper:
|
| > In this paper it is analysed which of the thousands of stars
| in the WOW! Signal region could have the highest chance of
| being the real source of the signal, providing that it came
| from a star system similar to ours.
|
| And that hypothesis he answers. So maybe not the best science
| the hypothesis is stated and a possible answer is given with
| many 'but if's' attached to it.
|
| pdf: https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.06090
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I think some posters here are missing that Caballero isn't trying
| to prove anything, they just made a few assumptions (if it was
| created by intelligent life, then...), looked for something that
| matched those assumptions, and selected a candidate star system
| for further consideration. I don't see anywhere that they are
| claiming this is in any way evidence for the assertion that the
| Wow! signal originated by intelligent life.
| ordu wrote:
| Yeah. It is a problem of allocating scarce resources: which
| exoplanets to study first? How could one answer, except using
| any probabilistic evidence here is. Anything resistant to
| explanation by 'mundane' phenomena but might be explained by an
| phenomenon Caballero is trying to find, is a good probabilistic
| evidence that could be used to narrow searching space.
| monkpit wrote:
| I think part of the issue is that the title is a bit
| clickbait-y. Sure, it's technically a correct title, but at
| first glance it seems much more interesting than it actually
| is.
| dnautics wrote:
| How would you fix it? "Astronomer finds an exoplanet which
| fits exclusion criteria if WOW! Signal is intelligent in
| origin"?
| billforsternz wrote:
| I would fix it by not printing it at all because it's a
| click bait title with no substantial underlying story.
| privong wrote:
| > How would you fix it? "Astronomer finds an exoplanet
| which fits exclusion criteria if WOW! Signal is intelligent
| in origin"?
|
| As far as I can tell there's not even evidence of an
| exoplanet around that star (likely because that star hasn't
| been searched for evidence of an exoplanet). The arXiv
| preprint basically amounts to "Identification of a Sun-like
| star in the same part of the sky where the 'Wow' signal
| originated."
| Beldin wrote:
| > _" Identification of a Sun-like star in the same part
| of the sky where the 'Wow' signal originated."_
|
| Even that is clickbaity - it fails to account how likely
| it was to find such a star in that volume of space.
|
| That would at least offer some analysis of the situation.
| sushshshsh wrote:
| ITT: people getting mad about a guy's reasoning where he says
| "well, I looked over there and it might be worth looking deeper
| into"
| m3kw9 wrote:
| The evidence he presented is the very definition of anything is
| possible.
| therealbilly wrote:
| Cool, let's send someone to check it out.
| kens wrote:
| I read the paper (1) and it's kind of pointless. There's no
| actual evidence of anything in this paper. It consists of a
| database search of stars in the WOW signal direction, finding one
| that is sort of like the Sun. It is unknown if this star even has
| any exoplanets. Many comments think there is an exoplanet, so let
| me emphasize that all that is known to exist is a star.
|
| (1) https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.06090.pdf
| sushshshsh wrote:
| Is this information _not_ helpful?
|
| I am completely disgusted by the HN tone of "it's pointless to
| look at this because there are potential flaws"
| dovin wrote:
| The paper isn't pointless, but it is highly speculative given
| its assumptions. Makes it feel less like a scientific paper
| advancing knowledge and more like a tech blog post to me.
| Beldin wrote:
| The information isn't helpful. If the paper wanted to make a
| case for this star being a candidate for the signal's origin,
| the paper should have at least discussed the expected
| probability of finding such a start in such a volume in the
| Milky Way.
|
| They found 1. Or 14. Or a lot more, if you relax a constraint
| that isn't motivated. The "paper" concludes that both
| candidate volumes( _) of space should be searched for
| exoplanets.
|
| (_) only one "horn" (of 2) received the signal, but they
| don't know which one. Hence two possible volumes of space
| where the signal could have originated.
| yummybear wrote:
| That seems like awfully weak evidence, if you could even call it
| that.
| valuearb wrote:
| Judge: Mr. Hutz We've been in here for four hours. Do you have
| any evidence at all?
|
| Hutz: Well, Your Honor. We've plenty of hearsay and conjecture.
| Those are KINDS of evidence.
| iso1210 wrote:
| Simpsons is on Fox isn't it. It all makes sense now.
| smoyer wrote:
| "Located in the right part of the sky" ... even one degree of
| horizon represents a huge area and the researcher admits that
| there are other targets in the area. I'd argue that the premise
| that the signal comes from an earth-like planet isn't even
| scientifically valid. Who says other life-forms are most likely
| to form on in an earth-like environment? Isn't that currently a
| sample size of one? Does life need a planet to exist? What if the
| signal came from an alien interstellar space-craft?
|
| The only way to provide further analysis for this signal is to
| find it again.
| carlmr wrote:
| I think there may be a probabilistic argument for some of these
| points.
|
| While a sample size of one is not much, it's more than none. We
| know we have life on our planet, so we know it's possible in an
| earth like environment. So the only evidence we have points to
| earth like planets being more likely.
|
| The interstellar space craft is of course possible, but since
| we don't have any ourselves, but we have radio for a while now,
| it seems more likely that the signal originated from a planet,
| since the interstellar space craft is much more complex
| technology for which we don't have evidence yet.
| rurban wrote:
| This is the signal from 1977 they are talking about:
| http://www.bigear.org/wow20th.htm
| mellosouls wrote:
| I've only read the article and not the research but that's
| because the article says the argument is simply:
|
| 1. The Wow! signal is intelligent in origin.
|
| 2. This exoplanet system here is in an area the signal might have
| come from.
|
| 3. It looks a bit like our system so might have intelligent life.
|
| This sounds like more of a moonshot for believers rather than a
| thoroughly scientific investigation.
| satisfaction wrote:
| To quote the article directly: "Caballero reasoned that if the
| source was some other life form, it would likely be living on
| an exoplanet.."
|
| The author does not claim the signal is intelligent.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| But then he only found a possible source _if_ the signal is
| intelligent. He did not find a natural astronomical
| phenomenon in that system that could be the source.
| partisan wrote:
| I found this article frustrating to read because of the lack of
| details, explanation, or attempts to educate the reader.
| Overall, it is just the reporting of speculation and nothing
| more.
|
| That said, I wonder if this is the type of news source we need.
| Anyone who wants further details can and should research the
| topic before drawing conclusions like the pre-baked ones we
| usually receive from our news sources.
| Uehreka wrote:
| Nah, I feel like "sources or GTFO". If an article has a
| source then you can at least evaluate the claims yourself.
| But if the article is vague and doesn't cite, then you have
| to look through science news or journals for things that
| "look like" they could've prompted the article, but you can't
| be sure if you've found the actual source (which may be more
| or less substantive than the thing you do find).
| thesuitonym wrote:
| >In his[Alberto Caballero] paper uploaded to the arXiv
| preprint server
|
| That looks like a citation to me. This isn't a defense of
| the article, which is bad for a variety of reasons. I'm
| just saying let's stick to what's true, rather than
| pretending they didn't cite a source just because they
| didn't have a hyperlink.
| benpanter wrote:
| The "paper" is here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.06090 but
| its analysis is not really something that you'd get
| published in an astronomy journal [speaking as a former
| professional astronomer]
| partisan wrote:
| Sorry to pry, but what does one do after a professional
| astronomy career?
| eecc wrote:
| You write Scala? (https://tpolecat.github.io)
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It's missing a link. The article directly references a
| paper, but gives no way to unambiguously locate it.
| That's not a source, it's an open invitation to research.
| garmaine wrote:
| Wow signal has been pretty conclusively shown to be the reflected
| spectra of hydrogen out gassing from a comet core. The actual
| comet in question has been found and similar signals detected. OP
| didn't get the memo I guess.
| bcraven wrote:
| Amusingly phys.org has that from June 7, 2017:
|
| https://phys.org/news/2017-06-wow-mystery-space.html
| SoSoRoCoCo wrote:
| Wow! (No pun intended) That is a serious lack of editorial
| review for a physics news source. It's basically a retraction
| of a factual article with speculation.
| JetSetWilly wrote:
| Wikipedia states:
|
| > This hypothesis was dismissed by astronomers, including
| members of the original Big Ear research team, as the cited
| comets were not in the beam at the correct time. Furthermore,
| comets do not emit strongly at the frequencies involved, and
| there is no explanation for why a comet would be observed in
| one beam but not in the other
|
| So, not actually conclusively shown at all.
| garmaine wrote:
| https://phys.org/news/2017-06-wow-mystery-space.html
|
| Someone who spent their entire life defending conjecture is
| going to find a reason to believe it still holds half a
| century later. But the evidence against is compelling to
| those not so invested in the outcome. There are weird aspects
| of the signal that are perfectly explained by it being
| hydrogen gas.
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