We Just Sent a Message to Try to Talk to Aliens on Another World

The message was sent last month on the anniversary of the 1974 Arecibo message and targeted a recently discovered planetary system in the constellation of Canis Minor , the system is just 12 light years away and in March this year was discovered to have 2 planets with one of them in the habitable zone.
The parent star is a Red Dwarf and the planet , GJ 273b, is believed to be a rocky planet that potentially could harbor liquid water , and possibly life.

If ET are there and listening the message they will receive contains information on our understanding of mathematics , radio waves and timekeeping , should they understand the message we could expect a reply within 25 years and in the worst case scenario an invasion fleet 50 years after that.

This new message – beamed from an antenna in Norway over roughly eight hours over a three-day period in October – is simpler and may be more readily understood, Vakoch says.
It begins with information about counting, arithmetic, geometry, and trigonometry, and includes a description of the radio waves that carry the message, as well as a tutorial on clocks and timekeeping, to see if any potential inhabitants of GJ 273b have an understanding of time similar to our own.
www.newscientist.com...

I agree with the school of thought that says until we know more about the dangers that might exist out there we are probably best to keep quite until we have the means to defend ourselves should we receive unwanted attention.

a reply to: gortex

Completely agree if our own nature is any indication.

Ask yourself honestly, has the progression of technology made us better human beings?

Not hardly.

a reply to: gortex

Hopefully they are listening. Unless they point their directional receivers right at us though...

"I'm sorry, we could not complete your call."

Did I read somewhere the signal coming back from Voyager is a trillionth of a watt when it gets here, takes an entire array of dishes pointed right at it to detect it?

What would be the signal strength of the outgoing message when it arrives there, "twelve light years" away?

a reply to: EternalShadow

Ask yourself honestly, has the progression of technology made us better human beings?

Not hardly.

Our logic is any better. Why make a call to nowhere?

I dont know... if an ET force come to take over the world, it will be welcomed by half the population, their explanations will be lets get rid of the known evil first then deal with the ET.

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: gortex
Did I read somewhere the signal coming back from Voyager is a trillionth of a watt when it gets here, takes an entire array of dishes pointed right at it to detect it?

What would be the signal strength of the outgoing message when it arrives there, "twelve light years" away?

Comparing the signal strength of a satellite versus an earth based transmission is a bit different, but regardless, if there is life there they will need to

A) Be intelligent enough to be using similar communications techniques, but not too advanced that our communication methods are primitive and no longer used.
B) Be looking right at us when the signal arrives
C) Be able to translate the transmission.

There is probably a better chance to be struck by lightning while collecting your lottery winnings, twice.

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: gortex
What would be the signal strength of the outgoing message when it arrives there, "twelve light years" away?

Well I don't for sure know what frequency they transmitted on, but according to this article they used a 32 meter wide dish.
www.space.com...
For fun and simplicity, let's assume the aliens are listening on a dish that is the same size and power as our transmitter. I don't know for sure the frequency they used, but this article suggests it might have been 930 mHz (www.wired.com... ). That would give a dish with 30% efficiency a gain of 44.65 db. The same article above seems to allude to a bit rate of 125 bits per second. I can't find any info on what the transmission power was set to, but it seems to be capable of 2 megawatts, so we'll go with that.
www.eiscat.se...
Given a distance of 12.36 ly, and a receiver temperature of about 22 kelvin (typical for JPL's deep space dishes deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov... ), we can calculate a link budget. By my calculations, the path loss would be 373.2 dB, with gain this would be 283.9 dB. With a transmitter power of 2 MW, the received power at Luyten's star would be 8.2*10^-23 watts. Given a receiver temperature of 22 k (and again assuming the dish they're listening with is equal in size to the one we transmitted with), the background noise level would be about 463 times higher than the signal we transmitted. If they were instead listening with a 70 meter wide dish equal in size to the largest deep space antennas NASA routinely uses, the noise level would still be about 97 times higher than the signal. Even Arecibo would be unable to decode it (but probably good enough to detect its presence); a 305 meter diameter dish with 70% efficiency and a receiver temp of 22 k (about half of what Arecibo normally has for a system temperature www.ncra.tifr.res.in... ) would still be in a situation where the noise level was about twice the signal strength. Close, and good enough to detect the signal, but no cigar on decoding the signal. Depressing, isn't it?

Bad idea!

It's like walking into deep tropical water with bloody chickens strapped to your nads.

You don't know there are sharks, but if there are, you f***** up!

a reply to: gortex

Hello out there.

Plenty of refined resources here we have already packed on our surface and mined for you.

Our planet has liquid water on it's surface as well as a native biosphere.

Please don't eat us.



IT has drifted for countless eon's since being made by another just like it, suddenly it receives a signal, it does not understand the signal but the signal is definitely artificial so it adjusts it's trajectory and heads for the source of the signal. signal's are so very rare as if all those that could make them had been culled by someone else or wiped out entirely.

Eon's pass and the planet below has long since fallen into an age of primitiveness following some unknown catastrophe, maybe someone else decided to destroy there civilization but left once it was deemed complete, a few people hid in caves and jungles to try to pick up the pieces but everything they had ever known was gone and they feared the sky but now following countless ages a new civilization is attempting to rise having to learn all over again and totally oblivious to the fact it is not the first to do so, only the recent remains of it's own precursor society's are recognized and the few that claim there was once a golden age before are derided and humiliated as lunatic's.

They enjoy a thousand years of prosperity though it is often a bumpy road and wars larger than any they could imagine sometimes wrack there world leading it to the brink of self destruction but somehow they hang in there.

Then IT arrives, the small object plummet's like a meteor into the ocean and there it burrows into the crust were it begin's to replicate itself creating both copy's of itself and more specialized devices, they erupt around the coastlines of the continent's and swarm over the land, under it and through the air, no matter how many are destroyed they just keep coming.

The last man dies as the mindless robot designed long ago by a scared alien race who feared the sky's launches several of it's copy's into space were they shall drift for eon's, countless eon's listening for an signal's, waiting and watching.

After the machines on the surface have scoured every part of the surface and every tunnel and crack that lead below it, after they have destroyed everything that was made, built or manufactured they then eventually turn upon themselves disassembling until only one remain's, removing all evidence that they were ever there except for it and it then sleep's, it won't last as long as the one's in space but it will last long enough to ensure no other civilization arises just in case it missed any of the being's that had built the one that it had destroyed, IT will last for at least several thousand years and the dead world will drift on through space populated now only by bacteria and a few primitive plant's that have clung to existence, a few small animal's and insects may have also survived but most of the large life has been destroyed along with the sentient race whom had built it's once proud and now vanished city's.

Maybe in a cave somewhere that the machines somehow missed or in the deepest jungle devoid of all technology a man survives, maybe but unlikely.

If he does his legend's will speak only of a forgotten golden age, of a terror of the sky god's and of a great fall and he will fear the sky, his primitive descendant's offering sacrifices to appease the terrible sky god's but over time there alters will get bigger and more ornamental, there priests and king's will become the first step's in establishing a new society and eventually civilization may yet arise again, perhaps it has countless time's but only when there were survivors.

a reply to: SpaceXIsReal

An addendum. I probably under-estimated the efficiency of the transmitting dish. I admit that 30% figure was a holdover from some older calculations I had done to debunk a guy claiming that there's no way we could be receiving data from something as far as the New Horizons probe so I was demonstrating that even with extremely generously low efficiency, a 70 meter dish can do the job. If we assume a more realistic 70% efficiency for both the transmitter and receiver, a dish the size of Arecibo is just barely large enough to be realistically able to decode a 125 bit per second signal from the dish they used. The signal would be 1.06 times as powerful as the noise by my calculations, and that is probably being a bit generous to the system temperature of the receiving dish. Still, it seems likely that it's not an accident that Arecibo is just barely large enough; I bet they chose the combination of transmitter and transmission rate specifically to fit a link budget that would allow an Arecibo sized dish to decode their signal. Barely.

a reply to: SpaceXIsReal

Presumably the signal was repeated over and over again (?) in which case teasing the message from the noise would be pretty easy.



Anyway, if there's anyone out there that has good technology, they can probably 'hear' our radar anyway.

originally posted by: SpaceXIsReal

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: gortex
What would be the signal strength of the outgoing message when it arrives there, "twelve light years" away?

Well I don't for sure know what frequency they transmitted on, but according to this article they used a 32 meter wide dish.
www.space.com...
For fun and simplicity, let's assume the aliens are listening on a dish that is the same size and power as our transmitter. I don't know for sure the frequency they used, but this article suggests it might have been 930 mHz (www.wired.com... ). That would give a dish with 30% efficiency a gain of 44.65 db. The same article above seems to allude to a bit rate of 125 bits per second. I can't find any info on what the transmission power was set to, but it seems to be capable of 2 megawatts, so we'll go with that.
www.eiscat.se...
Given a distance of 12.36 ly, and a receiver temperature of about 22 kelvin (typical for JPL's deep space dishes deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov... ), we can calculate a link budget. By my calculations, the path loss would be 373.2 dB, with gain this would be 283.9 dB. With a transmitter power of 2 MW, the received power at Luyten's star would be 8.2*10^-23 watts. Given a receiver temperature of 22 k (and again assuming the dish they're listening with is equal in size to the one we transmitted with), the background noise level would be about 463 times higher than the signal we transmitted. If they were instead listening with a 70 meter wide dish equal in size to the largest deep space antennas NASA routinely uses, the noise level would still be about 97 times higher than the signal. Even Arecibo would be unable to decode it (but probably good enough to detect its presence); a 305 meter diameter dish with 70% efficiency and a receiver temp of 22 k (about half of what Arecibo normally has for a system temperature www.ncra.tifr.res.in... ) would still be in a situation where the noise level was about twice the signal strength. Close, and good enough to detect the signal, but no cigar on decoding the signal. Depressing, isn't it?

I was going to say the EXACT same thing. Matches my calculations exactly!

Joke aside, why would we even send it, if we know that when the message arrives it won't be able to be decoded? Do you have any ideas? Are they just crossing their fingers that if there is someone/something there, that they will have the technology to remove the noise and find the message? Curious to hear your thoughts on that.

Seems pointless, unless they know something we don't. And I wonder how much this project cost?

ETA: Just saw your addendum post. Am still curious about your thoughts on why we sent it.

originally posted by: gortex
I agree with the school of thought that says until we know more about the dangers that might exist out there we are probably best to keep quite until we have the means to defend ourselves should we receive unwanted attention.

originally posted by: Jonjonj
Bad idea!

It's like walking into deep tropical water with bloody chickens strapped to your nads.

You don't know there are sharks, but if there are, you f***** up!

a reply to: LABTECH767

I hate to break it to you, but we've been broadcasting radio into space for over a century now. Since the deployment of Ballistic Missile Early Warning radars more than 50 years ago, our signals have been much stronger than the Norwegian signal. Many of the air search radars on modern navy ships are more powerful. A radio astronomer told me more than 30 years ago that the Earth brighter than the Sun at radio wavelengths.

At this point, any message from us to the aliens should begin with "Sorry for the spam."

originally posted by: gortex

I agree with the school of thought that says until we know more about the dangers that might exist out there we are probably best to keep quite until we have the means to defend ourselves should we receive unwanted attention.

True enough^^

a reply to: KansasGirl

It's more for publicity than anything else, it was conducted as part of a campaign called "Sónar Calling GJ 273b" named after and spearheaded by the Sónar music festival.

I almost would think that they already received a message from GJ 273b. Why would you blindly send a message if you don't know to receive one back, pointless waiting twenty-four years for nothing?

Excellent. They can repeat it to us while they're cooking us up for dinner.

a reply to: Vector99

There is probably a better chance to be struck by lightning while collecting your lottery winnings, twice.

Thanks, I can get behind that.

People continue playing the lotto even though they know they ain't gonna go.

originally posted by: Jonjonj
Bad idea!

It's like walking into deep tropical water with bloody chickens strapped to your nads.

You don't know there are sharks, but if there are, you f***** up!

Perhaps it is an even worse idea for them?

Imagine if they studied us and concluded that we are a threat that must be eliminated?

a reply to: SpaceXIsReal

That was awesome, I couldn't have received a straighter answer from JPL.

Considering (then) we sent the 8 hour signal over three days, they could if they have their own version of SETI randomly scanning, possibly pick up on it and maybe, been able to record one whole loop for decoding.

It would turn out to be their WOW signal and of course they would focus all their effort on that.

The twenty four hour clock is ticking on a return.

Adding: According to Drake, the likelihood that particular star is Inhabited with a civilization advanced enough to have this capability at all, makes this very highly unlikely, like you said.

Which begs the question: why send it?

Unless... they know more than they are telling, have received signals before and are involved in a two way communication. And If not there, maybe elsewhere.

We are desperate to connect aren't we?