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jared.nance says | |||
| This is an experimental thread. There is an article available on arXiv (www.arxiv.org), numbered astro-ph/9410069v1 it is about a 320EeV event detected by the fly's eye observatory in utah. this is an ENORMOUS amount of energy - a particle with a momentum literally equivalent to a major league fastball. the paper is entitled "in search of a source for the 320 EeV Fly's Eye Cosmic Ray". i am currently in the process of reading this paper, i would invite interested parties to also read it (or not read it and speculate, ask questions, etc) and post their thoughts. |
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| Total Topic Karma: 8 | - More by this Author | |||
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Viczy says |
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| 320 EeV? As in
eV? Unless my slide rule is lying to me that things going at c ...which is a real pisser because I'm trying to work to 3 s.f. |
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| - 22 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Joe says |
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| That is quite interesting. I read the abstract and the first section of the paper. Unfortunately, I think it is a little bit too much for me to handle right now, since I don't like reading stuff that I don't full understand. The string hypothesis is very intriguing. | ||||||
| - 22 February, 2007 | ||||||
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jared.nance says |
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| yeah, eV. that is really goddamned fast. viczy, do you plan on reading the paper? joe, i bet it would be more intriguing if you read the paper... | ||||||
| - 22 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Viczy says |
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| Right, I'll go read the paper. | ||||||
| - 23 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Viczy says |
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| Found the PDF. [link=http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/9410/9410069.pdf[/link] Fascinating stuff. | ||||||
| - 23 February, 2007 | ||||||
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jared.nance says |
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| i finished the paper last night, let me know when you're done with it and we can discuss further. | ||||||
| - 23 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Joe says |
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| I haven't had a chance to read the whole thing yet (you changed my mind and now I plan on reading it), but I just wanted to say that arxiv.org is perhaps the best thing ever. Just about any paper that I could think of using is on there, in full text. It's amazing. | ||||||
| - 23 February, 2007 | ||||||
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jared.nance says |
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| arXiv is amazing, i love it. you can get on there and find a paper about any damn thing you want, or might be interested in, or might not. there's a huge number of great computer science and mathematics papers on there as well, ripe for learning new subjects. glad you like it! | ||||||
| - 23 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Rob Masson says |
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| Jared, I skimmed through the Math, Astrophysics isn't my bag baby but the conclusions were really interesting. Essentially they tried to rationalize a lot of peotential causes from gravity lensing of a Pulsar to it being a much further object in behind and came up with reasons why none of these fit due to the red shifts obsered and the general intensity of the particle.. If it were the destruction of a Cosmic String then it could be a very timely validation of String Theory.. Ok.. since I read this I kid of had a bit of a crazy idea that I will float by you all for your entertainment and scorn. So currently we make a rather large asumption about how we conduct our search for signs of Extraterrestrial Intelligence. We assume that we will recieve some kind of coherent, repeating signal that canot be mistaken as a natural phenominae due to it's regularity and perhaps even a more coherent message embedded in the signal, like a math primer or something. But it really assumes that someone on the other side makes the same kinds of assumptions and has a concept of discrete mathematics. Now we make these assumption because they are pretty safe, we view them as Universal truths. What if they are not. How would you signal another race if you could make NO assumptions about what they know and how they think. Well I think it would be similar to how you might signal for attention if you were on a Desert Island and wanted to attract attention. You would find a big open space with nothing in it so it is visible from the air and perhaps even the sea, and you would make a big fire. So maybe if you are going to do this in the Galactic sense you find a nice little spot in the Universe that is as empty of interesting objects as you can get.. no nearby Pulsars or black holes, no binary stars, nada.. And you set off a really big Candle. It says.. "There is something interesting where there should be nothing... Come and take a look." Crazy idea huh.... |
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| - 23 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Tara says |
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| Interesting thought, Rob. That's definitely something I haven't thought about but my question would then be, is there really any spot in space that isn't occupied by something? Isn't there matter and energy everywhere? Personally, it's difficult for me to believe that there isn't extraterrestrial life besides that which exists on our own planet--I think it's narrow-minded of individuals to think that we're the only ones chilling out around here, but people will think what they will. As to how this other life would communicate with us, I have absolutely no idea outside of the realms I've seen in movies like Contact (make fun of me all you will, I LOVE that movie), so I applaud you for coming up with your own theory. | ||||||
| - 23 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Lacey says |
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| @ Tara I COMPLETELY agree with you. It would definately be self centered, and idiotic, of mankind to believe that we are the only life, or intellegent life, in the universe. If these other beings could communicate with us i think they would have already done it. Just like we are pretty advanced with technology, we cant send messages from one galaxy to another. Not yet anyway, and i figure thats how these other beings might be. Also, i agree with you about there being matter everywhere. If there isnt it's anti-matter, and that in itself is something. |
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| - 24 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Rob Masson says |
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| @Tara and Lacey, An excleent point made by both of you. There is of course no complete "emptiness" anywhere, there is always trace elements of mattte (and anti-matter) and at the quantum level matter is phasing in and out of existance constantly. What is interesting about what this particular obsevation has made is that the strength of the particle observed indicates that it was released from a very energetic source, something along th elines of a Pulsar etc. However there is no astronomical object in that area that would explain it and there is insignifigant red shift to say that it originated from another area behind or around and was "bent" into that trajectory. So in essence it really is a big candle in an empty field. I am not a UFO advocate, or beleive that I have been abducted by aliens. But I do beleive that to imagine that we are the only intelligent life in the vast universe is insanely self-serving. I beleive it is only a matter of time before we discover evidenace of other intelligent life out there somewhere. Perhaps this little flare is the equivalent of some civilization saying "anybody Out There?" or maybe ET caught a flat and is just waiting for AAA.. *smile* Sure would be cool to be able to go and take a look to find out though huh! *grin* |
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| - 24 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Lacey says |
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| @ Rob I see where you are getting at, but its still a mystery i suppose. Also, im sad for ET. AAA takes forever! =P |
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| - 24 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Ati says |
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| I too find it implausible that in a universe as large as ours seems to be, that we humans are the only thing capable of evaluating ourselves. Now, I do think mathematical signals are a pretty safe bet. It can be pretty well assumed than any species which evolved will come into existance with some simple rules of mathematics, and if they are truly intelligent they will be able to extrapolate from these laws. To give you an example why, consider this: An animal that thinks that eating food is subtracting from the total amount of food, or something similar is not going to survive very long. Even more primitive animals like household pets exhibit some knowledge o mathmatics, if not on a concious level (for instance, for a dog to be jealous or angry about another dog in the house, he has to at least be capapble of understanding the concept of 'more' and 'less'. Then once a species becomes capable of examing and attempting to enhance ite own thought processes, it will be able to extrapolate from what it already knows, and generate sometign bearing a pretty close resemblence to our mathematics. Thus, I propose that any signals we send out should be mathematical in nature, and any we look for should be the same. |
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| - 24 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Rob Masson says |
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| @Lacey, Inded it is a mystery... Until we can go and visit there... *sigh* @ATI, Your logic is infallible my freind.. BUt isn't it based on the asumption of discrete mathematics? Couldn't intelligence develop without that view, a more continuous/organic approach to influencing their universe. What if a species were to develop that relied entirely on manipulating biology to create advantages. Might they never need the concept of discrete values but rather see the universe as gigantic ecosystem? I guess my real point here is that ultiately I think we are going to have to think COMPLETELY out of the box in order to have a chance at understanding all the increible things the Universe is prepared to show us.. |
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| - 24 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Ati says |
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| Well Rob, I think then we come up against what we actually consider to be 'intelligent life'. Can we consider something intelligent if it has no concept of math, or considers is unimportant? Math shares many fundamental roots with almost all of the logic we undersand, and it would be hard for a species with any similarities to ourselves to be able to reason and not be able to perform mathematical operations. As for a different kind of math, or method to describe the universe, it seems to me that, while their advanced number theory might be different, most of the basics will still be the same. No matter who you are, you still need pi to figure out the circumference of a circle, and 2 + 2 will always be equal to four. |
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| - 24 February, 2007 | ||||||
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jared.nance says |
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| well i have to agree with ati, counting systems/numbers are universal and cross-cultural. numbers just seem to be one of those things that organisms figure out, and advanced mathematics isn't far behind it. as soon as you are trying to figure out any nonlinear problem, you need calculus... i think he's not assuming discrete mathematics, but rather the existence of continuous variables of some kind. and if the principle of nonlocality is true, there's no reason to suspect anything else. as to this particle being some sort of signal... maybe. but let's remember the amount of energy involved... the most advanced terrestrial particle accelerator is capable of
eV. this is 8 orders of magnitude beyond that... which is a tremendous number regardless of the level of advancement of intelligence. rob, you're right too. life is a tenacious little bastard, and i think will likely develop given a source of energy and enough time. we should be prepared to encounter living things that are completely beyond our comprehension or expectations. i think this one at the end of the day is a real mystery. while it's not possible to rule out distant events, they do a fairly convincing job of analyzing the relevant probabilities. the fact that strings are high in the running for possible explanations is pretty interesting to me, as well. |
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| - 24 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Ati says |
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| In my opinion, it seems almost impossible that we're the only one's out there. I'm not going to cite the Drake equation, because that can turn out however you want based on the bias inherant to the data you put into it. On the other hand though, the universe as we know it is a big place. A really big place. And if you happen to get a collection of chemicals or something similar that is capable of making imperfect copies of itself, and is capable of producing greater or fewer copies based on its behavior, more complex life is almost assured. Life on earth has been shown to exist in a number of climates so hostile that they rival or exede the conditions on other planets. And that's just carbon-based life, which is by no means all there can be. Now, here comes the tricky bit. It seems pretty obvious that we're going to get simple organisms on a good number of planets, but what about becoming intelligent? Intelligent life on earth has only showed up very recently, in the last million years or so, and it looks like the earth persisted for about five bilion years before that, so it could be argued that it was just an unlikely coincidence that some simpler animal, with no idea what it was in for, figured out how use tools. As a counter argument, I would point out that after humans achieved self awareness and intelligence our population exploded, and our life expectancy doubled (yes, I know infant death rates are factored in there to, but bear with me). It seems that intelligence is a very good survival trait to have, in the short term at any rate (whether or not it is good for a species, or a planet for that matter, in the long term remains to be seen). Although I personally feel that intelligence is probable for most worlds with life, I am going to treat any 'signals' with a level of skepticism, unless they clearly contain patterns that could not have originated from a natural source. |
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| - 24 February, 2007 | ||||||
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