News we can't possibly fight over (SETI)

[American]

Mysterious signals from 1000 light years away (http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996341)
"New Scientist, UK - 6 hours ago
In February 2003, astronomers involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) pointed the massive radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, at ..."


It appears to be DoS'd, possibly Drudged. No mirror servers, no Google cache.....

Has anyone read the full story?

[American]

Never mind, Slashdot (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/01/2244203&tid=160&tid=134&tid=1) picked it up. Shows what this forum is worth.......

[aerocontrols]

I question the timing of this alien broadcast.

It seems designed to steal the spotlight from the RNC.

Aliens should follow the Prime Directive and stay out of US politics.

[American]

"Just Some Guy" did this analysis:
Once you get the data file, plot it as a function and get a best-fit polynomial approximation for (it's not terribly complex). Take the second derivative.

Now, notice that there are lots of places where the new graph will almost touch zero (coming within 4% of mean) then reverse direction, but in other places the line continues right across zero like a typical sine curve. Also note that the zero-crossings and near-zero-crossings are at almost regular intervals.

Next, assign an arbitary "zero" to those places where the graph reverses direction suddenly, and "one" to the actual roots. String those zeros and ones together.

Starting at 11.32 seconds into the signal, I got a string of 11 ones then a zero, then 13 ones and a zero, then 17 and a zero, then 19, then 23, then 29, then 31, then 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, and so on until the resolution falls off at about 43.87 seconds.


Unless he's a liar, this dude just discovered an alien signal!

(In case your math SAT score was below 300.... 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31 is a sequence of primes.)

[Nie Trink Wasser]

oh this is too easy

its jesus....

case solved.

[Dorian Gray]

Seems like too much manipulation. The guy willed the signal into meaning something. Maybe you should try this post over at Atlantis Rising. They'll love you over there.

[American]

Even though subsequent posters pointed out it's a hoax and there is no prime number data, I am fully convinced that there really is something there, and I intend to tell everyone I know about it, starting NOW.

[Larspeart]

Originally posted by aerocontrols
I question the timing of this alien broadcast.

It seems designed to steal the spotlight from the RNC.

Aliens should follow the Prime Directive and stay out of US politics.


That made me LOL.

Thanks!