Astronomers have detected 'strange signals' that may come from a star 11 light-years away

Business Insider ^ | 07/14/17 | Dan Mosher

[MortMan]

No in engineering speak.

A signal is simply an energy source.

In other milieus, “signal” means an intentional message.

[Political Junkie Too]

...the signal was picked up and observed to be "almost periodic".

-PJ

[minnesota_bound]

I think it is the coffee maker interference again.

[Candor7]

Warming up the pizza can have intergalactic repercussions!

Klaatu will have to wait a few more millennia, stranded on a red dwarf moon!

[Vaduz]

Thanks

[fso301]

I think there are ‘people’ out there; and with all those stars and possible planets, it makes sense that some might be more advanced than we are. But I’m not sure what picking up their signals would do for us, if we could decipher them; except perhaps to inform our philosophies in some ways.

I can’t get this to work real well, but it’s interesting (works best on Chrome):

Thanks. I remember teachers speaking from time-to-time of assorted radio, television, radar, etc signals having been sent inadvertently (mostly) into space since the 20th century. Implicit in their descriptions was an assumption that such signals never weakened and that if you could fly out into space faster than the speed of light, you could tune in and listen/watch every broadcast since a particular station went on air.

What the teachers didn't tell us was that even in a pure vacuum, the energy of a signal decreases with distance from the transmitter. Similar to the thickness of rubber decreasing as a balloon expands. At a certain point, the balloon bursts. However, if we continue expansion with a theoretical rubber balloon, there will come a point where such a vast area has to be covered that our solar system could pass between the theoretical rubber molecules.

Continue the expansion and entire galaxies will pass between the theoretical rubber molecules of the balloon.

Consider a sphere 1 mile in radius. It has a surface area of 4(pi)r^2 = 12.17 square miles. Expand the same sphere out to a 10 mile radius and its surface area becomes 1,256.7 square miles... a 100x increase. Continue the expansion to a radius of 100 miles results in a surface area of 125,664 square miles, a 10,000x larger than a sphere having a one mile radius.

Let's continue this expansion to say 1 light year (5,878,625,373,183.607 miles). Such a sphere one light year in diameter would have a surface area of 434,272,620,366,851,293,351,504,170 square miles. Unfortunately, our solar system's nearest star Proxima Centauri is 4.243 light years (24,943,007,458,418 miles) away. That means a theoretical spherical signal from your local radio station that is just reaching Proxima Centauri has spread out over 7,818,231,263,832,821,809,920,503,799 square miles!

Assume your local station has a strong 1 megawatt transmitter. Those one million watts have to be spread out over that enormous surface area. So thin do those 1 million watts have to be spread that there would be just .000,000,000,000,000,000,000,012,790.6 watts per square mile on Proxima Centauri. And Proxima Centauri, part of the three star Alpha Centauri cluster is just our nearest neighbor.

Obviously a beamed transmission and higher power levels will reach deeper into space but not much farther when dealing with a cosmic scale.

[Jamestown1630]

Thanks for all that! It’s definitely over my head, but I understand the point.

A thought I had was: even if they could ‘hear’ us, or we hear them, what would we make of what we heard? Even on Earth, cultures can be so different, despite learning languages. And even if some things are ‘universal’ throughout Creation, we may have completely different ways of looking at/understanding/notating them.

(Driving today my husband and I heard ‘Come Together’ on the radio. I wondered what an ET civilization would make of that; I also thought of Londo and the ‘Hokey Pokey’ ;-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AphKxQ2NsQo

[JimRed]

If it did originate from an intelligent source, that source is long gone unless lifespans are on a whole different scale there.

[Jamestown1630]

I don’t think we’re ever going to talk to/meet Outer Space Folks, unless we - or they - find ways to defy/sneak around physical laws as we currently understand them.

[fso301]

(Driving today my husband and I heard ‘Come Together’ on the radio. I wondered what an ET civilization would make of that; I also thought of Londo and the ‘Hokey Pokey’ ;-)

Now you bring up another problem. Stations are allowed to transmit on the same frequency as long as they are far enough apart that their signals do not interfere with each other. The FCC is responsible in the United States for assigning frequencies to stations.

While one station plays Hokey Pokey, Another station on the same frequency but 200 miles away plays Come Together. Every 200 miles, or so there is another station playing a song on the exact frequency.

From the standpoint of a receiver high enough up to be able to "hear" all these stations simultaneously, it will as you can imagine sound like noise aka static.

[Jamestown1630]

Frankly, that suits me fine. I'd much prefer that the ETs hear neither of those.

(Though I regret that they can't hear Fur Elise, Sleepers Awake; or even:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJObmQdz6lg

G'Nite!