Mystery signal coming from Proxima Centauri

[UM-Bot]

Astronomers are currently investigating a signal coming from the direction of our closest neighboring star system.

https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/342038/mystery-signal-picked-up-from-proxima-centauri

[Trelane]

We've located the source. It's coming from a single X-wing Fighter....

[Nnicolette]

Sure have heard of proxima centauri a lot of the years. Always the claimed source of visitors or something of that nature.

What is an X wing fighter doing out there? I mean it was already claimed to be consistent so how could that be mistaken for something 50 light years away moving around the star..? Doesn't sound right.

[Robotic Jew]

1 hour ago, Trelane said:

We've located the source. It's coming from a single X-wing Fighter....

One X wing? Great...

[Troublehalf]

This is a very intriguing discovery... the worrying part is that there are people in the scientific community who are angry that this information was 'leaked' instead of being 'checked' before a paper was written and released. But this begs the question; is a lot of vital information for the public hidden from our view? Is this glory hogging? I know there is supposed to be a protocol if you actually discover alien life (and the protocol is, I believe, 'you contact the USA' which is a bit lame but I can't remember the exact sequence of events, somebody else might know it) but this is quite concerning if people are blasting the leakers of this when it is obviously massively important that the public knows. The same old arguments of why it shouldn't be released will be spouted (public isn't ready, scientific rigour, there is no profit etc etc). Telling people there might be a 'man made' signal from another planet that in the end, after 'scientific rigour' turns out to be something irrelevant (whether this 'irrelevant' source is the actual truth is a completely different matter and maybe people would question whatever it was) is better, in my opinion, than hiding this information until the 'right time'.

The most interesting attack on these articles is that they did not follow 'post-detection protocols' - which I do know know. Maybe the person I remember attacking this from knows, but I don't. Maybe people here know. Maybe it's linked to my 'contact USA' thing. He also mentions that 'BL gets lots of signals' - this is true, but I would suspect that this leaked information has already passed the most common 'signals' they get (such as a satellite, or from aircraft or whatever). The key part of this is that it comes specifically from Proxima. If you asked a random person on the street to point out where Proxima was in the night sky, chances are they wouldn't point to it and those that do, I suspect a small % would have done it knowingly. This in itself makes it quite interesting on its own. The fact it seems to follow like you'd expect a radio signal on a planet to do is further interest.

What happens next will be vital and what the public is told will be interesting. A lot of people would love it to be intelligent life; I personally would. However even if it was just something new to add to our knowledge banks would be great. Some sort of geological oddity or some cosmic occurance we don't know of. But the fact that there is a constant niggle of 'is this the truth we are told?' can gnaw at people. Especially when it comes to things like this. I can only applaud the leakers (again, going off the word of somebody else) for risking action by telling us about this and I hope the truth, if covered up (again, tinfoil) is leaked to be false.

 

[Trelane]

3 hours ago, Nnicolette said:

Sure have heard of proxima centauri a lot of the years. Always the claimed source of visitors or something of that nature.

What is an X wing fighter doing out there? I mean it was already claimed to be consistent so how could that be mistaken for something 50 light years away moving around the star..? Doesn't sound right.

The pilot was searching for something. He felt a presence.

 

3 hours ago, Robotic Jew said:

One X wing? Great...

One, only one. The only one actually.

[Abramelin]

17 hours ago, UM-Bot said:

Astronomers are currently investigating a signal coming from the direction of our closest neighboring star system.

https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/342038/mystery-signal-picked-up-from-proxima-centauri

The signal, translated:

L-E-A-V-E-U-S-A-L-O-N-E

[+joc]

Quote

 Breakthrough Listen Project - a $100 million initiative dedicated to the search for evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial communications.

I wish they would have just asked me.  I would have told them there isn't any life at all on Proxima...for only $100,000.
 

[Nnicolette]

17 hours ago, Troublehalf said:

This is a very intriguing discovery... the worrying part is that there are people in the scientific community who are angry that this information was 'leaked' instead of being 'checked' before a paper was written and released. But this begs the question; is a lot of vital information for the public hidden from our view? Is this glory hogging? I know there is supposed to be a protocol if you actually discover alien life (and the protocol is, I believe, 'you contact the USA' which is a bit lame but I can't remember the exact sequence of events, somebody else might know it) but this is quite concerning if people are blasting the leakers of this when it is obviously massively important that the public knows. The same old arguments of why it shouldn't be released will be spouted (public isn't ready, scientific rigour, there is no profit etc etc). Telling people there might be a 'man made' signal from another planet that in the end, after 'scientific rigour' turns out to be something irrelevant (whether this 'irrelevant' source is the actual truth is a completely different matter and maybe people would question whatever it was) is better, in my opinion, than hiding this information until the 'right time'.

The most interesting attack on these articles is that they did not follow 'post-detection protocols' - which I do know know. Maybe the person I remember attacking this from knows, but I don't. Maybe people here know. Maybe it's linked to my 'contact USA' thing. He also mentions that 'BL gets lots of signals' - this is true, but I would suspect that this leaked information has already passed the most common 'signals' they get (such as a satellite, or from aircraft or whatever). The key part of this is that it comes specifically from Proxima. If you asked a random person on the street to point out where Proxima was in the night sky, chances are they wouldn't point to it and those that do, I suspect a small % would have done it knowingly. This in itself makes it quite interesting on its own. The fact it seems to follow like you'd expect a radio signal on a planet to do is further interest.

What happens next will be vital and what the public is told will be interesting. A lot of people would love it to be intelligent life; I personally would. However even if it was just something new to add to our knowledge banks would be great. Some sort of geological oddity or some cosmic occurance we don't know of. But the fact that there is a constant niggle of 'is this the truth we are told?' can gnaw at people. Especially when it comes to things like this. I can only applaud the leakers (again, going off the word of somebody else) for risking action by telling us about this and I hope the truth, if covered up (again, tinfoil) is leaked to be false.

 

That's what I was saying! Just less eloquently. No way a fighter jet mimicked the movement of a planet around proxima centauri... That is to precise to come back and say it is something that flies insanely fast in our own atmosphere that was mistaken... Give me a break... 

From the article: 

"Researchers from the Breakthrough Listen Project – a £70m initiative to find alien life through radio telescopes – have been studying the radio waves since April 2019."

(Yes it took me this long to realise what an x-fighter was... I dont generally acknowledge sci fi movies. You win this round.)

Edited December 19, 2020 by Nnicolette

[bison]

More information about the Proxima Centauri candidate SETI signal has come to light. An excellent article in Scientific American is linked below.  To summarize a few points:

The signal was detected repeatedly, over several days during April and May, 2019. It was received by a project monitoring stellar flares from Proxima Centauri. This data was archived, and eventually flagged for examination by the Breakthrough Listen project. 

Breakthrough Listen has been analyzing the data since October, 2020. It passed all of the 'filters' intended to screen out Earth-based interference. The signal was repeatedly lost when the radio telescope was aimed away from the star, and regained when re-aiming on it. This tends to reduce the possibility that it was a local signal, and support its being extraterrestrial. 

The signal is very narrowband in nature. It occupies only one frequency 'bin', which, in modern SETI practice, are very narrow, indeed. The signal occurred at 982.002 MegaHertz, and appeared to be unmodulated. Two scientific papers on the Proxima Centauri signal are being prepared for publication. 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/alien-hunters-discover-mysterious-signal-from-proxima-centauri

[Abramelin]

“If you see such a signal and it’s not coming from the surface of Earth, you know you have detected extraterrestrial technology,” says Jason Wright, a SETI-centric astronomer"

 

Hope. That's all we have.

Hope. Hope that we are not the only species in space that thinks it is intelligent.

[+Noteverythingisaconspiracy]

On 12/18/2020 at 10:50 PM, Trelane said:

The pilot was searching for something. He felt a presence.

A presence he havent felt since...

On 12/18/2020 at 10:50 PM, Trelane said:

One, only one. The only one actually.

History tells us that one is all you need.

[+Razman]

On 12/18/2020 at 11:18 AM, Trelane said:

We've located the source. It's coming from a single X-wing Fighter....

Could be a death star.

[Trelane]

1 hour ago, Noteverythingisaconspiracy said:

A presence he havent felt since...

History tells us that one is all you need.

Recent history (The Mandalorian) reinforces that idea.

[bison]

The radio frequency of the Proxima Centauri signal ( 982.002 MegaHertz ) is very close to 3 times the deuterium spectral line ( 327.384 MHz ), which is well known among radio astronomers, It's reported to reveal scientific clues about the creation of the elements, and the origin of the universe.

This correspondence could be a coincidence, of course. It looks to me more like an example of the'magic frequency' logic used in SETI circles, than a natural phenomenon, or random Earthly interference, though. This 'magic frequency' business was mentioned in the motion picture 'Contact'. The one it used for  the signals from Vega was Pi times the neutral hydrogen line--   (3.141 x 1420.405 MHz=4461.492 MHz) .

Edited December 21, 2020 by bison
improved composition

[astrobeing]

2 hours ago, bison said:

The radio frequency of the Proxima Centauri signal ( 982.002 MegaHertz ) is very close to 3 times the deuterium spectral line ( 327.384 MHz ), which is well known among radio astronomers, It's reported to reveal scientific clues about the creation of the elements, and the origin of the universe.

Are you referring to the Balmer series or something else?

[bison]

The Balmer Series applies to optical wavelengths. The frequencies to which i alluded are all in the radio range. The radio range has narrow spectral lines, just as the optical range has. These were discovered when radio astronomy had developed sufficiently to detect them. Radio spectra can provide information about the universe that is not available in the optical range. 

I've found no reference to a natural radio spectral line at 982 MegaHertz, or anywhere near it, after examining a number of lists of and articles about these. 

Edited December 21, 2020 by bison
added information

[Hyperionxvii]

On 12/19/2020 at 5:31 AM, Abramelin said:

The signal, translated:

L-E-A-V-E-U-S-A-L-O-N-E

I'm pretty sure they're safe from us for a very long time since Proxima Centauri is 4.2 light years away. Traveling at 1/10 the speed of light takes us 42 years to get there. And traveling at 1/10th the speed of light is still in the science fiction realm for we earthlings. They're perfectly safe, I'd suggest they worry about other things closer to home because they won't be seeing us for a very, very long time. 

[Hyperionxvii]

I get that this is a dead thread, but I really love topics like this. Every time a discussion ever comes up like this between friends, family, or colleagues, I always have the same opinion about the Fermi Paradox and related.

The obvious answer is that we can't know if we are alone or not because the distances are so vast that with our current technology, we can't detect them, even if they are there. 

Think of it this way, and use the USA as an extremely scaled down version of our galaxy. If I live in a section of the galaxy that has a very dense population, say the Manhattan Island of the galaxy, then maybe there are many other intelligent civilizations only a few light years away from me. But what if we live in an area of the galaxy that is more like rural Montana? Then there will be very few intelligent civilizations within a few light years of me, and most will be 10s or 100s or 1000s of lightyears away. If you take the size of our country and the size of the galaxy and just random odds, then it seems much more likely that we live in rural MT, instead of Manhattan and any other intelligent civilization is so far way from us, that we will never be able to detect it until we are able to traverse the galaxy at light speed or beyond. We don't even know if that is possible. And right now, we can't even get back to the moon, a meager 200,000 miles away, practically on our back porch. So, if we are ever able to become a space faring civilization, it will still be a very long time until we can detect other civilizations, even if they are there. 

It's the vast, mind boggling distances that make us alone, even if we are not. 

 

[Abramelin]

4 hours ago, Hyperionxvii said:

I'm pretty sure they're safe from us for a very long time since Proxima Centauri is 4.2 light years away. Traveling at 1/10 the speed of light takes us 42 years to get there. And traveling at 1/10th the speed of light is still in the science fiction realm for we earthlings. They're perfectly safe, I'd suggest they worry about other things closer to home because they won't be seeing us for a very, very long time. 

Really?

Well, then you should send them a signal, telling them not to worry.

 

[bison]

The Proxima Centauri signal is very narrow-banded. It's very likely technological, rather than natural. The key question, of course-- is it our technology or someone else's? Besides the intriguing 3 times the deuterium line radio frequency, which I already mentioned, above, there is this to consider:

The signal was observed to move upward in frequency, apparently for several days.  This may well have been caused by a Doppler shift as the transmitter moved toward us. However, this doesn't sound like the movement of any of our aircraft or satellites-- not consistently, over such a long period of time. It does sound like the movement of a rather slowly rotating planet, or the revolution of a planet around its star.  

Edited December 22, 2020 by bison
improved composition

[astrobeing]

On 12/20/2020 at 7:36 PM, bison said:

The Balmer Series applies to optical wavelengths. The frequencies to which i alluded are all in the radio range. The radio range has narrow spectral lines, just as the optical range has. These were discovered when radio astronomy had developed sufficiently to detect them. Radio spectra can provide information about the universe that is not available in the optical range.

But it sounds like it uses pretty much the same techniques.

7 hours ago, bison said:

The Proxima Centauri signal is very narrow-banded. It's very likely technological, rather than natural.

Natural sources aren't allowed to emit a narrow band signal? There could be some kind of rare event that emits it.

[bison]

Yes, it could be an astrophysical MASER, or something of that kind, but the odds are greatly against it, which is why I said ''very likely technological'. To begin with, no one seems to know of any natural MASERS at the frequency of the Proxima Centauri signal. All MASERS for a given substance emit radio waves at the same frequency.  

[Chronus]

Guys this is a real question, we get these signals every now and again, and I'm sure a lot of people don't think its aliens, what else could it be besides aliens though. Not trying to make a debate i just wonder if there could be anything else causing these.

[MrBene]

What do you guys think...if we finally discover that there is intelligent life elsewhere and they finally make contact, would we stop being jerks one to another in terms of war/corruption/environment damage/ etc?