Aliens may have been trying to contact us for decades - we've been looking for the wrong thing
For decades, we've been looking to the skies for any sign of aliens – but it turns out we may have been missing attempts at contact.
A new study has cast doubt on our radio signal detection methods, arguing that 'space weather' could be distorting incoming transmissions.
Until now, most experiments have focused on identifying spikes in radio frequency – signals unlikely to be produced by any other natural processes in space.
But experts have highlighted an overlooked complication.
Even if an extraterrestrial transmitter produces a perfectly narrow radio signal, it may not remain narrow by the time it leaves its home star's atmosphere.
This distortion, which happens near the point of origin, can 'smear' the signal's frequency, meaning it can be missed by our detectors that are primed to search for more focused radio waves.
'Searches are often optimized for extremely narrow signals,' Dr Vishal Gajjar, astronomer at the SETI Institute and lead author of the paper, said.
'If a signal gets broadened by its own star's environment, it can slip below our detection thresholds, even if it's there, potentially helping explain some of the radio silence we've seen in technosignature searches.'
The discovery could lead to better detection methods that take this into account.
It means even when signals are not 'perfectly razor–thin' by the time they reach Earth, they could still come from extraterrestrial life.
'By quantifying how stellar activity can reshape narrowband signals, we can design searches that are better matched to what actually arrives at Earth, not just what might be transmitted,' Grayce C. Brown, co–author of the study, said.
Writing in The Astrophysical Journal, the researchers concluded: 'The so–called Great Silence, when extended to the radio technosignature searchers, is not solely evidence for the absence of transmitters, but also a reflection of our detection limitations arising from a mismatch between the assumed signal morphology and the broadened line shapes.
https://www.msn.com/en-xl/news/other/ali...r-AA1XF1sL
For decades, we've been looking to the skies for any sign of aliens – but it turns out we may have been missing attempts at contact.
A new study has cast doubt on our radio signal detection methods, arguing that 'space weather' could be distorting incoming transmissions.
Until now, most experiments have focused on identifying spikes in radio frequency – signals unlikely to be produced by any other natural processes in space.
But experts have highlighted an overlooked complication.
Even if an extraterrestrial transmitter produces a perfectly narrow radio signal, it may not remain narrow by the time it leaves its home star's atmosphere.
This distortion, which happens near the point of origin, can 'smear' the signal's frequency, meaning it can be missed by our detectors that are primed to search for more focused radio waves.
'Searches are often optimized for extremely narrow signals,' Dr Vishal Gajjar, astronomer at the SETI Institute and lead author of the paper, said.
'If a signal gets broadened by its own star's environment, it can slip below our detection thresholds, even if it's there, potentially helping explain some of the radio silence we've seen in technosignature searches.'
The discovery could lead to better detection methods that take this into account.
It means even when signals are not 'perfectly razor–thin' by the time they reach Earth, they could still come from extraterrestrial life.
'By quantifying how stellar activity can reshape narrowband signals, we can design searches that are better matched to what actually arrives at Earth, not just what might be transmitted,' Grayce C. Brown, co–author of the study, said.
Writing in The Astrophysical Journal, the researchers concluded: 'The so–called Great Silence, when extended to the radio technosignature searchers, is not solely evidence for the absence of transmitters, but also a reflection of our detection limitations arising from a mismatch between the assumed signal morphology and the broadened line shapes.
https://www.msn.com/en-xl/news/other/ali...r-AA1XF1sL
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
