Naked Science Forum

On the Lighter Side => That CAN'T be true! => Topic started by: Europan Ocean on 30/04/2016 11:27:34

Title: NASA received a distress signal in 1998 in math code and it was deciphered?
Post by: Europan Ocean on 30/04/2016 11:27:34

I found this story of an SOS signal NASA received in January 1998 from Andromeda sent 80,000 years ago. Is the account real? Is their a record of a mathematical code received? Can the decoding be accurate? Or is this Russian propaganda?

Why are there no other signals from Andromeda?

Title: Re: NASA received a distress signal in 1998 in math code and it was deciphered?
Post by: RD on 01/05/2016 10:40:11

Quote from: Europan Ocean on 30/04/2016 11:27:34

I found this story of an SOS signal NASA received in January 1998 from Andromeda sent 80,000 years ago. Is the account real?

Andromeda galaxy is 2.5 million light-years from Earth. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_Galaxy)
So a message from there would take 2.5 million years to get here, rather than the "80,000 years" specified.

As for extracting meaning from a message written by a different species, we can't even decipher all human writing systems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undeciphered_writing_systems), so understanding ET's version of Morse-code (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse-code) is going to be impossible unless they include pictures of things we recognise (http://www.physics.utah.edu/~cassiday/p1080/lec08.html).

Title: Re: NASA received a distress signal in 1998 in math code and it was deciphered?
Post by: Europan Ocean on 05/05/2016 14:17:24

Good point about light speed and distance.