Just a reminder to everyone that it’s fun to hope it’s aliens, but Occam’s Razor suggests it isn’t and the real answer is likely something naturally occurring.
That’s what the article says. It seemed a little better than the usual clickbait because they got that out of the way early.
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.
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.
Then they find out it’s the the low battery warning on a carbon monoxide detector under the stairs of the emergency exit.
It’s a countdown ⏰
Jeff Goldblum Intensifies.
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.
