🔄FROM THE ARCHIVE Astronomers have now calculated the likelihood that the signal came from another advanced civilization — and the numbers don't look good.
On April 29, 2019, the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia began listing to the radio signals from the Sun’s nearest neighbor, Proxima Centauri, just over 4 lightyears away. The telescope was looking for evidence of solar flares and so listened for 30 minutes before retraining on a distant quasar to recalibrate and then pointing back.
Now Amir Siraj and Abraham Loeb from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have calculated the likelihood that the signal came from a Proxima Centauri-based civilization, even without another observation. They say the odds are so low as to effectively rule out the possibility — provided the assumptions they make in their calculations are valid.
But the team analyzing this signal have yet to find an obvious source. And they say the frequency of the signal drifts slightly over time, a phenomenon consistent with a signal from a rotating or orbiting body. This has increased the intrigue. The basic idea is that humanity had a beginning and will eventually come to an end. We currently sit somewhere on the timeline in between but at no special place or time, not particularly near the beginning or the end. In mathematical terms, we are unlikely to be in the first 2.5 per cent of humanity’s existence nor in the final 2.5 per cent. So with 95 percent confidence, we must be in the middle.
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