"Hey Glork!...Has anybody answered yet?"...
Posted on 09/01/2004 2:36:56 PM PDT by longshadow
bttt. Sorry I have been off the air.
Unless I am completely out of the loop, the narrowest band natural masers are about 300 Hz. SETI is looking around .1 to 8 Hz range depending on the search.
It's just one of a number of curious signals (or anomalies) that they are going to check out someday. Nothing more, nothing less.
here's a thread discussing the SETI@Home guy debunking this original story:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1205758/posts
I can easily understand why the SETI folks would be trying to ease back expectations, even if they thought they had something. Professional pride and all that.
LTS
I don't know how one would correct for the planets motion unless one knew the direction to the receiver. They'd have to know they were beaming the signal in the direction of the solar system. Which they might, if their transmitting antenna was anything like the Arecibo dish that we receive on. But the signal might be omni directionaly and not a deliberate attempt at communications. Which is kind of scary, because it implies even more transmitter power than a "beamed" signal would have. OTOH, it could be coming from much closer, from something we can't see. Natural event still seems most probable explaination. But that's not bad either, we'll learn something new.
Wonder whose PC was the one to find the signal? :)
But, if the signal was strong enough, he'd know there was a signal there. He might have figured out the FM pretty quickly, the CDMA would have been beyond his capability to analyze. If there is modulation on the signal, you might be able to decode it, but today you could tell it was there.
I suspect that the real problem is that, as you hint, that advanced civilizations won't be using radio frequencies for long distance communications. Much more bandwidth available up higher in the spectrum for space to space communications or relay.
Since the signal has only been observed for a few minutes, there's not enough information to determine rotation rate or orbital period of a planet, assuming the thing was even on a planet. If it were in space, there would only be it's orbital motion, which could include the orbit around a planet if it's orbiting a planet, the orbit of the planet (or it) around the star, and the motion of the star around the galaxcy to take into account.
I don't have enough data to answer the first part of your question, however, you can pretty much tell if it is a satellite (by analyzing the signal) and especially one that is geostationary (since it is fixed relative to the Earth).
Nah . . it's a cookbook . . .
Putting gravity to work, eh?
A lot of things are an illusion today.
Okay - but I suspect the illusion kinda fooled the fellows being dropped throught the gallows trap door.
SHGb02+14a seems to be coming from a point between the constellations Pisces and Aries, where there is no obvious star or planetary system within 1000 light years. And the transmission is very weak...Sounds like a moving point source, IOW, a spacecraft, sent out from one star system and headed for another, e.g. a robotic probe. Figuring out what kind of telemetry is being sent back might be impossible, even if this is correct.
There are other oddities. For instance, the signal’s frequency is drifting by between eight to 37 hertz per second. “The signal is moving rapidly in frequency and you would expect that to happen if you are looking at a transmitter on a planet that’s rotating very rapidly and where the civilisation is not correcting the transmission for the motion of the planet,” Korpela says.
This does not, however, convince Paul Horowitz, a Harvard University astronomer who looks for alien signals using optical telescopes. He points out that the SETI@home software corrects for any drift in frequency.
Much ado about nothing, because some reporter who didn't know what they were taling about jumped the gun.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.