Alien Probe or Galactic Driftwood? SETI Tunes In to 'Oumuamua [pronounced 'Yo Mama']

Scientific American ^

[onedoug]

Very interesting.

Thanks for posting.

[dfwgator]

Sounds like Ummagumma....

[BenLurkin]

Have that.

[PIF]

Various representations, actual images, artists representations - its hard to tell:

Expect more within your lifetime ... just a quick look around before the main battle fleet arrives ...

[z3n]

[PIF]

“These bizarre characteristics have raised eyebrows among professional practitioners of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, who use large radio telescopes to listen for interstellar radio transmissions from other cosmic civilizations. If ‘Oumuamua is in fact artificial, the reasoning goes, it might be transmitting or at least leaking radio waves.

“So far limited observations of ‘Oumuamua, using facilities such as the SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array, have turned up nothing. But this Wednesday at 3 p.m. Eastern time, the Breakthrough Listen project will aim the West Virgina-based 100-meter Green Bank Telescope at ‘Oumuamua for 10 hours of observations in a wide range of radio frequencies, scanning the object across its entire rotation in search of any signals. Breakthrough Listen is part of billionaire Yuri Milner’s Breakthrough Initiatives program, a collection of lavishly-funded efforts aiming to uncover evidence of life elsewhere in the universe. Other projects include Breakthrough Starshot, which intends to develop and launch interstellar probes, as well as Breakthrough Watch, which would use large telescopes to study exoplanets for signs of life.

“With our equipment at Green Bank, we can detect a signal the strength of a mobile phone coming out of this object,” Milner says. “We don’t want to be sensational in any way, and we are very realistic about the chances this is artificial, but because this is a unique situation we think mankind can afford 10 hours of observing time using the best equipment on the planet to check a low-probability hypothesis.” Besides being simply a search for signs of aliens, Breakthrough Listen’s efforts could also narrow down the possibilities for ‘Oumuamua’s composition by looking for signs of water vapor sublimating from any sun-warmed ice lurking beneath the object’s red, desiccated surface.”

(snip)
“Then again, Loeb says, “perhaps the aliens have a mothership that travels fast and releases baby spacecraft that freely fall into planetary system on a reconnaissance mission. In such a case, we might be able to intercept a communication signal between the different spacecraft.”

“Several years ago Loeb and two colleagues performed a speculative calculation estimating the interstellar abundance of ‘Oumuamua-sized space rocks based on the density of stars in the Milky Way and the vagaries of planet formation. That calculation, Loeb says, suggests the number of such space rocks is at least a hundred thousand times too low to account for ‘Oumuamua’s detection.

“Simply put, objects like ‘Oumuamua should be far too rare for our current telescopes to have any reasonable chance of spotting one. Newer studies gauging the odds find that for ‘Oumuamua’s detection to not be an astronomically unlikely fluke, there must be a sizeable population of such objects continuously passing through our solar system. This in turn suggests that more-capable future observatories, such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, will find many more when they begin operations in the 2020s.

“Typically in astronomy we don’t see things that are rare - if we see one, that means there’s a lot more out there,” says Breakthrough Listen’s lead scientist Andrew Siemion, who is also director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center. “So, while this is most likely a natural object, if we don’t eventually see any more, that would indeed be very strange and would increase interest from a SETI perspective.”

“Either way, Siemion says, “‘Oumuamua’s presence within our solar system affords Breakthrough Listen an opportunity to reach unprecedented sensitivities to possible artificial transmitters and demonstrate our ability to track nearby, fast-moving objects. Whether this object turns out to be artificial or natural, it’s a great target.”

“And if, against all odds, the Green Bank Telescope detects signals from this mysterious interstellar interloper - what happens then? Breakthrough Listen’s leaders assure us they would keep no secrets. First, the team at Green Bank would immediately re-observe ‘Oumuamua to confirm the signal. Next, they would reach out to astronomers around the world who could target the object with other radio telescopes. “We quite literally have a little Rolodex just for that,” Siemion says.

“And at that moment this would become public. There’s no way to keep something like this a secret, because it requires us calling everyone we can. We tend not to ‘cry wolf’ about these things.”

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Mistake number one: Assuming it would use radio. Anyone technologically able to send such a long term survey probe (if that is what it is) may have methods of communication that we have no idea about. Can a military that only knows how to communicate with semaphores understand encrypted radio signals? Or even that there is such a thing as radio?

[BlueLancer]

[edh]

We would like to know more.

[I want the USA back]

Wishing doesn’t make it true. It’s not a space probe from the galaxy x847.2 seeking out life forms to annihilate.

[Moonman62]

Furthermore, ‘Oumuamua shows no sign of moving due to rocketry or other technology, instead following an orbit shaped by the gravitational force of the sun. Its speed relative to the solar system (about 20 kilometers per second) also seems rather slow for any interstellar probe, which presumably would cruise at higher speeds for faster trips between stars. But that pace aligns perfectly with those of typical nearby stars—suggesting ‘Oumuamua might be merely a piece of galactic “driftwood” washed up by celestial currents.

...

I like how they leave the most likely explanation for last, and put the least likely explanation first.

[PIF]

If it is a probe, that thing didn’t send it. Rather, a “Dark Forest” hunter might have(1) ... you know the ones that make the Universe sound like it is uninhabited? Radio was a very bad idea, if that is the case - an advertisement that we are potential competitors and need to be eliminated.

(1) See Cixin Liu’s “The Dark Forest” for a through explanation of the Dark Forest Theory - the corollary to Fermi’s Paradox.

[Gideon7]

Greg Bear’s “The Forge of God” is another good hard SF novel that goes the dark forest route.

[PIF]

Can’t remember reading it - the blurb didn’t sound all that interesting - Bear posits aliens actually coming to Earth to do the deed, but Liu uses the more realistic alien who does not come within light years of the solar system - they just release a ‘seed’ which on reaching the solar system reduces it to a 2-dimensional object.

[Redcitizen]

You do post many interesting articles that I enjoy reading. Thanks for posting them.