An odd signal from the Galactic center

[John Clark]

In Yesterday's issue of The  Astrophysical Journal Astronomers at Australia's Square Kilometer Array radio telescope reported they have found an odd signal coming from the center of the Milky Way. The signal is very highly circularly polarized, which is pretty unusual for an astronomical object, and it does not produce any detectable visible, infrared, or x-ray emissions, only radio. And it varies in intensity randomly by a factor of 100 over time scales as short as one day, so whatever it is it must be a small compact object. Astronomers don't know what the source could be but they do know what it isn't, they have ruled out Pulsars, flare stars, and GammaRay bursts. To my knowledge nobody has even offered up a hypothesis about what the source could be.  

Here is a free preprint of the article:  

Discovery of ASKAP J173608.2−321635 as a Highly-Polarized Transient Point Source with the Australian SKA Pathfinder

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

[spudb...@aol.com]

Scanned this yesterday, JC. I always hope for the SETI result, and it always disappoints. Even if it was ETI working on a black hole project for their own (its own?) benefit, always there is the simpler explanation that covers the evidence. The Milky Way could be dead and empty (The boonies) or there's life but no tool building life. In either case it may simply be that the early galaxy produced lots of debris, like lots of neutron stars falling into the alleged AGN, active galactic nucleus to perform just as you have described.  

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[John Clark]

On Wed, Oct 13, 2021 at 11:48 AM <spudb...@aol.com> wrote:

> Scanned this yesterday, JC. I always hope for the SETI result,

There is zero evidence this has anything to do with ET.  

> and it always disappoints.

That's because every time a new astronomical discovery is made that cannot immediately be explained somebody ALWAYS says it must be ET.  Personally, because I am unable to find a flaw in the Great Flter argument,  I would be devastated if we detected ET;  it would mean the civilization we received a radio message from would have almost certainly been destroyed by now, and the future of the human race is likely to be very bleak indeed. I like to think the reason we haven't detected any other civilization already is because we are the first, not because we just haven't encountered the mysterious civilization destroying phenomenon yet that every intelligent species always eventually finds itself facing.

The Great Filter

 

> Even if it was ETI working on a black hole project for their own (its own?) benefit, always there is the simpler explanation that covers the evidence.

There is no known mechanism by which a Black Hole or a Neutron Star could produce radio waves and nothing else, much less highly circularly polarized radio waves.

> neutron stars falling into the alleged AGN, active galactic nucleus to perform just as you have described.  

That would produce massive amounts of X-Rays and Gamma Rays as well as visible light, but there was none, only an intense burst of circularly polarized radio waves emanating from a very compact object at irregular times.

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

no2

[Lawrence Crowell]

This has caused some head scratching in recent days. Is this something connected to fundamental physics or more surface phenomenology? We do not know. We might put this in the same unknown category as fast radio bursts.

LC

[Lawrence Crowell]

If I had to conjecture, I would say maybe this is a natural maser. This may have two possible sources, some configuration of gas near the Sgr*A black hole or from the black hole itself.

In the first case the environment with ionizing radiation and UV photons that excite atoms, maybe there is a population inversion. Atoms in some ionized region might acts as atoms in an RF cavity and there is then a natural maser established.

The second with the black hole is the rotation of the black hole blue shifts light along the direction of rotation and red shifts them in the opposite direction. This superradiance then acts as a way to create a population inversion of atomic states nears the black hole. In this case the radiation we receive is highly redshifted as it escapes the black hole.

It is unlikely to be ETI. Life in this region, except for maybe subsurface microbes, is tough. Complex life such as anything intelligent is very unlikely.

LC

[Brent Meeker]

On 10/13/2021 9:43 AM, John Clark wrote:

On Wed, Oct 13, 2021 at 11:48 AM <spudb...@aol.com> wrote:

> Scanned this yesterday, JC. I always hope for the SETI result,

There is zero evidence this has anything to do with ET.  

> and it always disappoints.

That's because every time a new astronomical discovery is made that cannot immediately be explained somebody ALWAYS says it must be ET.  Personally, because I am unable to find a flaw in the Great Flter argument,  I would be devastated if we detected ET;  it would mean the civilization we received a radio message from would have almost certainly been destroyed by now, and the future of the human race is likely to be very bleak indeed. I like to think the reason we haven't detected any other civilization already is because we are the first, not because we just haven't encountered the mysterious civilization destroying phenomenon yet that every intelligent species always eventually finds itself facing.

If you notice, our radiation to space has decreased as we have used higher frequencies and more directed communication (like fiber optics and directional antennae) and as we compress and encrypt the radiation will look more and more thermal.

Brent

The Great Filter

 

> Even if it was ETI working on a black hole project for their own (its own?) benefit, always there is the simpler explanation that covers the evidence.

There is no known mechanism by which a Black Hole or a Neutron Star could produce radio waves and nothing else, much less highly circularly polarized radio waves.

> neutron stars falling into the alleged AGN, active galactic nucleus to perform just as you have described.  

That would produce massive amounts of X-Rays and Gamma Rays as well as visible light, but there was none, only an intense burst of circularly polarized radio waves emanating from a very compact object at irregular times.

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

no2

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[Telmo Menezes]

> and it always disappoints.

That's because every time a new astronomical discovery is made that cannot immediately be explained somebody ALWAYS says it must be ET.  Personally, because I am unable to find a flaw in the Great Flter argument,  I would be devastated if we detected ET;

The flaw is that it assumes that civilizations have a good chance of expanding throughout the galaxy, if enough time passes. Given what we currently know about the laws of physics, it looks more plausible that we are forever bound to our local star system.

I think people in contemporary culture tend to assume that technological progress can continue forever. Maybe it is indeed an infinite game, but maybe there is a ceiling. Perhaps sooner or later we bump into the physical limit for all meaningful technologies, and that's all folks. A depressing hypothesis: maybe we are not so far from that point.

Telmo.

[John Clark]

On Wed, Oct 13, 2021 at 8:41 PM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

> If I had to conjecture, I would say maybe this is a natural maser.

Interesting idea.

> This may have two possible sources, some configuration of gas near the Sgr*A black hole or from the black hole itself.

Because the signal varies in intensity by a factor of 100 over as little as a day I don't think it could come from anything as big as  Sgr*A, but maybe it could come from a smaller Black Hole in orbit around it.

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolisxo

xoq

[Lawrence Crowell]

The ultimate limit on size if the time for a causal signal to traverse or cycle through it. The Sgr*A black hole is 4.2 million solar masses or about 13 million km Schwarzschild radius. A signal at the speed of light can easily move across or around the horizon within a day. Yet I admit my conjecture here could easily be wrong.

LC

[spudb...@aol.com]

Agreed. Having said his, we have yet to explore the limits of current telescopic engineering. My fav is hanging gigantic thin-filament arrays of radio telescopes out at the edge of the solar system past the Kuiper Belt -Oort Cloud location and let the astronomers have at it. This kind of project is not beyond our capability, but beyond our wallets, psychologically. In fact all transactions are psychological, as the value of things is psychological essentially.

Another thought since descendants of  carbon-water brainy life, would be Joe and Jane Silicon, uploading, copying, all things Singularitarian. Could Silicon life evolve naturally, and be thus, not specifically biological? Well here is Walt Disney's version of life as we know it, and life as he imagined it. My point? harder to detect. Halloween approaches, enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ-T5VEueW0

Or Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Cloud

Spoiler-The Cloud is alive and smart and didn't know it was possible for life to live on planets.

All of this work of the 1950's that seems to be 'plausible' even today. Is it certain? No, is it even likely, um. I will live that to experts. For the pure astrophysics of it all, my brother in loves this kind of thing, for the 'discovery' of it all. For me, I am interested, but in it for ways to we use an identified process. Like maybe a way to shortcut it for nuclear fusion? Maybe, a way to affordably harness the CNO cycle. If you say not a chance, I'll go with you on this. 

https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/f0a40215-defc-d782-f01d-ef6f76a49cb8%40verizon.net

.

[spudb...@aol.com]

I agree! 

-----Original Message-----
From: John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com>

[John Clark]

On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 1:21 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> If you notice, our radiation to space has decreased as we have used higher frequencies and more directed communication (like fiber optics and directional antennae) and as we compress and encrypt the radiation will look more and more thermal.

That's true, the Earth's radio signature became much more random looking after June 12 2009. On that date all TV transmitters in the USA switched over from analog to digital. This made things more difficult for a hypothetical ET to infer from radio alone that intelligent life exists on the planet for two reasons:

1) Digital TV transmitters use far less power than the analog variety.

2) An analog TV signal obviously came from a technological civilization, but if you didn't know the particular compression codec used by digital broadcasters in the USA , and ET wouldn't, then the signal would *almost* look like white noise. The compression is not perfect, that's why I said "almost".

However there is more to life than radio so I don't think this can be used as an excuse to explain away the no show of ET. If an intelligent civilization had existed in the galaxy for millions or billions of years then I don't think you'd need a radio to detect it, such an advanced civilization would be obvious to a blind man in a fog bank. 

  

 John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

oo6

[Brent Meeker]

If it existed for a mere million years it might not overlap with our existence and hence not be detected. 

I don't know how you conclude an intelligent civilization would be obvious; since the point of my post is the more advanced the civilization the more likely it is to become dim and look thermal.

Brent

  

 John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

oo6

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[John Clark]

On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 5:57 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> I don't know how you conclude an intelligent civilization would be obvious;

Even if you make the ridiculously conservative assumption that ET will never be able to achieve speeds any faster than we can with our space probes, they could still send a Von Neumann Probe to every star in the Galaxy in less than 50,000 years, and the night sky would never look the same again. I'm not talking about perpetual motion machines or time machines or faster than light travel, a Von Neumann Probe does not need any new science, just improved engineering, the ability to place individual atoms where you want them to be.

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

sox

oo6

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[Brent Meeker]

On 10/14/2021 3:23 PM, John Clark wrote:

On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 5:57 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> I don't know how you conclude an intelligent civilization would be obvious;

Even if you make the ridiculously conservative assumption that ET will never be able to achieve speeds any faster than we can with our space probes, they could still send a Von Neumann Probe to every star in the Galaxy in less than 50,000 years, and the night sky would never look the same again. I'm not talking about perpetual motion machines or time machines or faster than light travel, a Von Neumann Probe does not need any new science, just improved engineering, the ability to place individual atoms where you want them to be.

And you know they would do this how?

Brent

[John Clark]

On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 6:52 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> And you know they would do this how?

I'd have a hard time understanding why they wouldn't, after all it's not as if it would be expensive, if you can control matter at the atomic level then a Von Neumann Probe would literally be dirt cheap

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

b7x

 

[Brent Meeker]

Well maybe they've turned 75% of the matter in von Neumann probes (after all once they start reproducing there's no way to stop them) and you've discovered the nature of dark matter.

Brent

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