MEMBER & GUEST INTERACTION SECTION > DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
6 billion light year old radio signal heard - designed for Earth's listening
beemaster:
I'm looking for an article of this to post, but I caught part of this on George Noory's Coasttocoastam.com show.
An annex receiver of SETI briefly picked up a radio signal, so shocking in possibility that it may be the most incredible story I have ever heard - and definitely the most amazing science story to ever if true.
At the end of July, supposedly a broad band radio signal was captured briefly from a place estimate to be transmitted from 6 billion light years away from a relatively unmapped area that is normally blocked by countless other galaxies between there and here. I'll get to why this is important, not just because a signal was detected, but what the implications are BEYOND the fact that 6 billion years ago life may have transmitted a signal out into space - no, this goes way beyond this.
The galactic alignment issue is big for starters, because of the shear stuff between here and there, the radio guest said it will be decades before a line of sight (okay, space curves - but include that if you wish) decades before we can figuratively point at it again. But in just that briefest of signal, the following was gathered.
The short signal reception, only a few seconds long, was composed of bursts only about a nano second in length, but spaced EXACTLY (atomically speaking) ONE SECOND APART
If you missed the last line above, reread it, and start to ponder what that means. Time (Earth time) is relative to how far from the sun we are, the length of a PLANETARY year, man's own division of time into days, hours, minutes and seconds: all this is an EARTH thing, and nowhere else in the Universe is there likely a planet with the same exact distance from its sun, rotation speeds, etc. so...
ANY SIGNAL spaced in PERFECT EARTH SECONDS would be signals made/sent to Earth, but then throw in that we are talking about 6 billion light years away in our 13 to 16 billion year old Universe, so then comes the "way too" amazing part:
You have a civilization that aimed a specific signal toward a place in a distant galaxy where a planet had not even formed yet, transmitted that signal in a a way that is specifically unique to our planet's measure of time and when we will be technologically advanced enough to receive it and understand the significance of the duration of the signal.
If this were Sci-Fi people would laugh at it, but SETI is analyzing this blip of data and we surely should hear more, lots more. Of course, how many times have findings been covered up as hash noises, reflections from space junk, etc.?
I agree it seems impossible by all standards, standards of our logic, knowledge of time, space, radiowaves, time warping. Could the signal received have literally been sent exactly at the time we received it, tossing out how we understand time, speed of light, etc? Literally, did we get a message faster than a text message from somewhere at that incredible distance? Could beings be advanced enough to warp time, see where we are, what we have to receive their message and instantly (defying our understanding that light is the fastest thing there is) and bypassing it all by wormhole, or whatever - all of which, although incredible, seems more likely than the first part of this bizarre story.
Either way, we may have heard from someone else, time will tell if the details are either released, discredited or redacted. Just remember engineers thought that a train traveling more than 80 mph was possible, but humans would not be able to withstand breathing at such speeds - we thought the world was flat, never ending or you fell of the end (I think the prior not the latter) but ships made of steel, never happen - they're to heavy. Radio signals from billions of light years away delivered instantly, no way, nothing travels faster than the speed of light.
We have been proven wrong countless times, that is how we evolve and further our understanding of the big picture. I sure hope to find more on this, and even though (at best) this may be a message in a bottle, we have been on that beach, searching for that bottle a long time - cool if it finally washes ashore.
Michael Bush:
>ANY SIGNAL spaced in PERFECT EARTH SECONDS would be signals made/sent to Earth
Only if they knew of the arbitrary divisions we came up with. A year is measurement based on astronomical regularity. The time it takes for our planet to circle the sun. A day is based on astronomical regularity, the time it takes for our planet to complete one rotation. A month is the amount of time between full moons (but we cheated it down from 13 actual full moons to an arbitrary 12 months which does not match full moons at all). Then we arbitrarily decided to divide a day into 24 hours with no astronomical connection at all, and arbitrarily decided to divide those into 60 minutes. It just as easily could have been 10 "hours" in a day and 100 "minutes" to a hour and 100 "seconds" to a minute by simply dividing a day into 10 and each of those into 100 and each of those into 100. This system was actually used in China at one time in the past and in France after the French revolution. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in a hour and 60 seconds in a minute are all arbitrary. If we had not adopted the Roman calendar and timekeeping system we might have something entirely different. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Time_measurement_systems The Roman system came from the original idea that there were 360 days in a year (which was mistaken as there are 365 days 8 hours and 10 minutes in a year) and so a circle was broken up into "days" which we called degrees. Hence 360 degrees in a full circle. Then, since we were on the track of something that divided evenly into 60s we went with 60 minutes and 60 seconds in a degree They carried this over into minutes and seconds in a day even though they divided the day (degree) into 24 first and did not do the same with a circle...
Anyway, the point is that a second is a totally arbitrary unit of measurement. Now if "the"y know something about us as a people, and not just our planets cycles, "they" might know something about how long a second is...
Kathyp:
maybe "they" just sent out an evenly space signal and it happened to match our seconds? or, it came from the future...or the past!
seems to me that the evenly spaced part is more important than the time measurement?
Michael Bush:
>seems to me that the evenly spaced part is more important than the time measurement?
I did not intend to downplay the "evenly spaced" part. That is certainly significant.
KD4MOJ:
Got to think.... how was it to remain evenly spaced traveling all those light years away?
...DOUG
KD4MOJ
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