First rule of SETI: It can’t be aliens until it can’t be anything else.
Every new signal defy explanation for a little while, until it’s explained.
Did we ever figure out what the WOW signal was?
Apparently not yet, astronomers are still waiting for the signal to repeat to appropriately study it.
METI president Douglas Vakoch told Die Welt that any putative SETI signal detections must be replicated for confirmation, and the lack of such replication for the Wow! signal means it has little credibility.[3
For now there are just guesses. If such burst isn’t a fluke and repeats, astronomers will get a chance to better study it and provide a confident explanation.
The title here is a little misleading. A signal that repeated once per hour, as in 60 minutes, would be pretty astounding, and might be a good way for a civilization with enough information about us to say ‘hi’ in a way we’d recognize. It would certainly be very strange to see a natural phenomenon ticking away the hours at a precise rate.
53.8 minutes, on the other hand, is a bit less attention grabbing.
I’d argue that a more precise timing like 53.8 minutes is more attention grabbing. It shows finer grained control of technology; a “look here! we can do this too!” sort of demonstration.
If we are the “more advanced” neighbor; then I could see that being done.
It’s more that their knowing what an hour is would be impressive. Our selection of the hour as a measure of time is arbitrary outside of its specific context. It’s just 1/24th of our planet’s rotational period. We could just as easily split the day up into 10ths or 15ths or 7ths or whatever.
To broadcast a signal that’s exactly an hour long to a planet that uses the hour as a measure of time might potentially imply someone trying to reference our way of measuring time. A signal that repeats every 53.8 minutes is on a timer that isn’t specifically relevant to Earth in the same way an hour exactly would be.
That signal might be insignificant to us; but it may be their way of establishing a timescale.
The time may be derived from how long their planet takes to rotate…aka the length of one sub-unit of their day…aka 1/24th of their day.
Or, it could be the periodicity of the lifecycle of a cool bug they like, or it could be just a random period from any huge number of celestial objects we have yet to categorize. I have a guess for which of these options it is, personally.
Such a cycle is a cycle like any other. It’s not “more precise” when it’s shorter.
We attribute the 53.8 according to our scale.
Then they find out it’s the the low battery warning on a carbon monoxide detector under the stairs of the emergency exit.
RESPOND TO IT!
“Hello, Earth? We’ve been trying to get in contact with you about your local star’s extended warranty…”
Do NOT let them recite their poetry to you!!!
Pulsar?
The article describes how the characteristics of this signal don’t match any of the current models for neutron stars or white dwarfs. So quite possibly, but the question is how.
It’s a countdown ⏰
Jeff Goldblum Intensifies.
Personally I think the more complex pattern of having 3 different states being cycled through once an hour is significantly less likely to be natural.
That, of course, doesn’t mean much by itself; it still is possible that it is natural and we just don’t understand why. More research into how and why that is happening is absolutely required to answer the question. I just don’t know if we will do it, or if we have the tech needed to fully investigate it yet.
when it can write out pi in a pule we will know peeps. we will know.
Well, if it’s been running for a long time, it’s up to some random point in pi and we missed the start. But we can still try to interpret the signal as digits, and check if this sequence appears anywhere in pi… Well what do you know, it does!
(disclaimer: it has never been proven that π has this property, but it is suspected)
never been proven
Don’t worry we can check the library of babel for the answer.
