WOW signal

[John Kierein]

This article describes it:
http://www.space.com/searchforlife/s...ow_021205.html
There is an interesting connection to this and my friend Grote Reber. The WOW signal was detected by the "big ear". Grote was friends with John Kraus who ran it and stayed at his house when he was visiting this country just after leaving a stay at my place in Boulder. Kraus writes about Grote in his book "Radio Astronomy". Grote stimulated the U. of Tasmania in Hobart to have a strong radio astronomy program with his large antenna farm he built near there in Bothwell, Tasmania. Grote didn't have much to say about SETI, sorta implying it was a mistake. He was more interested in making observations and maps at hectometric wavelengths.

[John Kierein]

You'd think that if they can spend 400 hours on a supercomputer calculating pi to over a trillion places they could spend more time looking for Wow.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...alculation&e=1

[Rodina]

I wonder if these Pi researchers go and get a grant just to print out all 1.2 trillion digits, just for the hell of it....

[aporetic_r]

Regarding Pi... So the people calculating it to such lengths want to know if it is truly infinite, as has been claimed. But once they get to a trillion digits, does it really actually matter for anything except the ever-present "gee-whiz" factor? Not that I am opposed to such a factor, mind you, but I was just wondering if there are any serious implications to such research. If Pi actually ended at the trillion-and-first digit, would anything substantive change?

Aporetic

[Wiley]

I think y'all are missing the point about calculating Pi. They are not calculating Pi just to calculate it; calculating Pi is a benchmark.

There are two reasons for modern calculations of Pi: testing algorithms and testing supercomputers. Since this was done at a university, I assume they are more interested in the algorithms used. While the new and improved value of Pi is not useful, the algorithms used are. This is not an achievement of mathematics but of computational science.

[boron10]

Aporetic:If Pi actually ended at the trillion-and-first digit, would anything substantive change?

Absolutely. It would mean that Pi is actually a rational number. A German mathemetician, Lambert, proved Pi's irrationality in 1761 (in 1882, Lindemann proved that Pi is algebraic), this find would discredit his proof. Since this proof has been checked and re-checked by undergraduate mathematics professors for many years, if we discovered that Pi is a rational number it would possibly discredit the structure of formal mathematics.

[JS Princeton]

Just to reiterate, discovering ever better approximations of pi is not scientific inquiry into the nature of the number pi but rather into the nature of calculating such a number. It has extremely practical implications (including making your computer faster, better, and cheaper). Maybe Pi-man will stop by and give us a hand.

[Ilya]

A German mathemetician, Lambert, proved Pi's irrationality in 1761 (in 1882, Lindemann proved that Pi is algebraic)

You mean, NOT algebraic. An algebraic number is a root of some finite polynomial, such as square root of 2: x^2 - 2 = 0

Pi is not a root of any polynomial, in other words not algebraic - also known as transcendental. One other commonly known transcendental number is e (base of natural logarithms); any other I'd have to look up.

[aporetic_r]

Thanks for your responses. Now this makes much more sense to me, and that's why I keep coming back...

Aporetic

[Zathras]

On 2002-12-06 16:55, JS Princeton wrote:
Just to reiterate, discovering ever better approximations of pi is not scientific inquiry into the nature of the number pi but rather into the nature of calculating such a number. It has extremely practical implications (including making your computer faster, better, and cheaper). Maybe Pi-man will stop by and give us a hand.

Oh, I thought you were going to tell you that there was a 95% chance that there would be between 50 billion and 20 trillion more digits of pi before it expired. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_lol.gif[/img]

Just kidding. Couldn't resist.

[boron10]

Ilya: You mean, NOT algebraic.

Yes, I did. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_eek.gif[/img] Thanks for pointing that out. I don't think there are any other transcendental numbers that are well-known to those who aren't mathematicians.

Wiley and JS, you are right, of course. The useful purpose for computing Pi to many digits is in computer science: theories of algorithms and coding applications.

[edited to give credit]

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: boron10 on 2002-12-06 18:05 ]</font>

[JS Princeton]

On 2002-12-06 17:30, Zathras wrote:

Oh, I thought you were going to tell you that there was a 95% chance that there would be between 50 billion and 20 trillion more digits of pi before it expired. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_lol.gif[/img]

Just kidding. Couldn't resist.

What... you don't think pi is special?

[aporetic_r]

Since we seem to be talking about it...

In college I took a really cool theoretical math course. We did a some number theory, set theory, topology, and a few other neat things. Can anybody recommend a good book for the layman? We used the book "Mathematics: The New Golden Age," by Keith Devlin, which was right at my level. Thanks.

Aporetic

[GrapesOfWrath]

On 2002-12-06 18:02, boron10 wrote:
I don't think there are any other transcendental numbers that are well-known to those who aren't mathematicians.

Depends on if you mean that they actually know that they are transcendental or not. Of course, if they didn't, they probably wouldn't know that pi or e are transcendental either. Otherwise, that's a misconception even among mathematicians. There are plenty of other commonly-known numbers that are transcendental. Any rational base logarithm of a rational number that is not a rational number is transcendental. For instance, log 2--which is not the same number as the ninth on the list at that link. That is a result of the Gelfond-Schneider theorem, mentioned in the tenth item on that list.

[Zathras]

On 2002-12-06 22:46, JS Princeton wrote:

On 2002-12-06 17:30, Zathras wrote:

Oh, I thought you were going to tell you that there was a 95% chance that there would be between 50 billion and 20 trillion more digits of pi before it expired. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_lol.gif[/img]

Just kidding. Couldn't resist.

What... you don't think pi is special?

Actually, when it comes to digits, pi is not special. The rational numbers form a countable set. The algebraic numbers also form a countable set. On the other hand, the irrational and transcendental numbers each form uncountable sets. Since pi is in a "much larger" set, it is decidedly not special.

[GrapesOfWrath]

On 2002-12-07 11:16, Zathras wrote:
Since pi is in a "much larger" set, it is decidedly not special.

I thought that we'd gotten to the point where we could tell when something was special, but not when it was not special. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[JS Princeton]

It was a joke, Zathras, a joke! You were supposed to laugh!

Of course, the real reason the analysis fails is because in mathematics there is no reason to assume anything has to be finite. 1/3 in decimal form fails just as miserably as does pi.

[Chip]

On 2002-12-06 08:16, John Kierein wrote:
...The WOW signal was detected by the "big ear".

Getting back to the "WOW signal" - here's some news from the Planetary Society:
http://www.planetary.org/html/news/a...s/2001/Wow.htm

[Zathras]

On 2002-12-07 13:19, JS Princeton wrote:
It was a joke, Zathras, a joke! You were supposed to laugh!
. . .

Oh, uh, sorry about that.
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[Under Dog]

Personally, I think its silly that SETI thinks they are going to detect communications between alien ships or planets. Presuming that their is another sentient species out their, I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't be using radio to communicate based on the fact that radio waves are extremely slow on a solar and galactic scale. Any species advanced enough to develop intergalactic travel is also bright enough to develop a better form of communications then the frequency spectrum. SETI is wasting time and money as far as I'm concerned. And the wow signal probably was a glitch or just was just a publicity stunt to gain funds and attention.

[ToSeek]

On 2002-12-07 16:27, Under Dog wrote:
Personally, I think its silly that SETI thinks they are going to detect communications between alien ships or planets. Presuming that their is another sentient species out their, I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't be using radio to communicate based on the fact that radio waves are extremely slow on a solar and galactic scale. Any species advanced enough to develop intergalactic travel is also bright enough to develop a better form of communications then the frequency spectrum. SETI is wasting time and money as far as I'm concerned. And the wow signal probably was a glitch or just was just a publicity stunt to gain funds and attention.

But they could be sending signals out specifically in order to communicate with more primitive races.

[Under Dog]

and why would they go out of their way to communicate with us? Its like us going out of our way to try to communicate to a rat. Their is no reason because its just not interesting enough.

[VanBurenVandal]

I wouldn’t say SETI is a waste. We crank out radio signals, and have been doing so for a while. If there is somebody out there, I’d imagine they would have used radio signals at some point in time, too. SETI would be looking in a certain window of civilization, after radio was invented, but before something else comes along. Granted, that may be a pretty small window, but it’s currently our best shot at finding someone else in the neighborhood…

[Chip]

On 2002-12-07 16:27, Under Dog wrote:
Personally, I think its silly that SETI thinks they are going to detect communications between alien ships or planets.

Keep in mind that a hypothetical alien civilization or entity might be sending out "signals" without the intention of communicating anything.
By way of analogy, many spiders create coherent web designs, but spider webs are probably not designed to communicate a message to you. The spiders are just going about their business of catching insects. Alien worlds with a technology approaching the physics we'd understand, (which might be few and far between,) might be doing many things that are alien to us, but emitting coherent signals (i.e. "designs") in the process.

Radio is still very new to us. We should keep listening.

[David Hall]

There may not be anything better to use than electromagnetic signals. Sure, there's speculation for other methods, such as gravitational waves, but nothing else has been shown to be practical so far.

Alien races my be stuck with radio by default.

[Under Dog]

Even if we detect anything, all that it will do is "OOOOhhh, so their are aliens out their!" Nothing more. Because we have no method of communicating with them. And then since they are out their the probably know we exist and have shown no interest to communicate with us. Millions have been spent just to answer a stupid question that in the end will turn out to be useless when their are far more important, scientifically beneficial in devours to explore. Like getting a human mission to mars on the drawing board. Or actually finishing the ISS. Some have been po-poing the ISS for some time but I think that once its finished, the research done aboard it will give great insights on how long humans can survive in space, how do you grow crops in space, etc. Things that will be essential if we ever hope to colonize mars or any other planet or moon for that matter. We could start worrying about if their are aliens out their once we have a firm foothold on space and not sink money into a big maybe project when serious projects are suffering.

[JS Princeton]

Under Dog, First of all, SETI is a drop in the proverbial bucket compared to the other programs you mentioned. I doubt that there is even a million dollars being spent on it today.

Communication is BY FAR the cheapest thing we can do compared to sending a human to Mars (I'm opposed to it as we could, for the same money, build some fabulous probes and observatories that actually would do better science) or building the Big White Elephant in the Sky known as the ISS (again, wasted money, as far as I'm concerned). A discovery of intelligence somewhere else in the universe would have grand existential import if nothing else. It would more than likely be heralded as one of the biggest discoveries of all time. Certainly going to Mars would also be heralded as an accomplishment, but the cost is staggering and the engineering involved to do it hardly makes sense from a pure science standpoint. Of course, there are other reasons to send humans out to explore the solar system (not the least of which is our own hubris), but for my money I would have rather seen the superconducting supercollider built than all this money that has been wasted on building a space station whose only purpose is to say we built a space station.

[Under Dog]

lol, the idea of alien life was dreamed up by humans in the last century. We are spending money on chasing something we made up. Based on no real scientific evidence of alien life existing. Just on flashy movies like the Star Wars saga and the various Star Trek series and movies. Not that I don't like those things I just don't think any real research should be centralized on them. They are their for inspiration not hard science. The ISS isn't useless, the insights it will give will provide a foundation on how we will colonize space. Well, that's if congress ever gives the money to nasa to develop cost effective colonization equipment and to build an actual colonization program. The commercial prospects of colonizing space are mind boggling if we ever start spending some serious money developing a cost effective way to going about this. If no steps are taken for the further exploration and colonization of space after the ISS program then yes it is useless because all the science done aboard it and any they will be done will go to waste. Only time will tell if congress starts taking the space program seriously again.
http://www.space.com/news/space_initiative_021118.html
heres an article concerning this, I'm confused as to why congress is putting out these congressional review panels as if nasa wouldn't know what to do with the money they need if they got it.
They should send people to mars eventually, not just robots. Robots are good for the scientific bit, I agree with you on that 100% but we also have to inspire people to be interested in space, robots and satellites just don't cut the cake.

[JS Princeton]

Well, right now the only purpose for the ISS is to improve international relations. The science budget for the station has been gutted and we won't get research crews there for probably a decade. It's a white elephant that has allowed us to improve relations with Russia and little else. Nothing of scientific importance is going on in the ISS except for spinoff technology. All the research experiments are low-key and not worth the billions that it takes to run the thing.

If you are truly interested in space colonization, then you have something totally different in mind from the reason that NASA and Congress continue to keep the ISS operational. In fact, it is strictly forbidden to talk about a human mission to Mars in consort with the Space Station, even though the plan was inspired by VonBraun oh those many years ago for a stepping stone to Mars. Right now we are building a waystation with no future plans to go anywhere.

[VanBurenVandal]

On 2002-12-08 15:07, Under Dog wrote:
lol, the idea of alien life was dreamed up by humans in the last century. We are spending money on chasing something we made up. Based on no real scientific evidence of alien life existing.

You are correct, there is no scientific proof for the presence of aliens. I, however, belong to the “what makes us so special” school of thought. Given the sheer size of the Milky Way, as long as the odds on a civilization like ours developing are not zero, there is probably something out there somewhere. And, as stated previously, they probably would use radio at some point in time. Also, you wish for more funding for space colonization. What if SETI does pick something up? I’d imagine NASA would see a *slight* increase in funding. It’s a government program, so the masses determine its funding, to an extent. Telling the public somebody else is out there seems like a sure-fire way to get NASA a bigger budget. SETI is a gamble, but the risks (cost of running) seem to pale when compared to the rewards (likely increased funding). Of course, that’s just my opinion…

_________________
Once bread has become toast, it can never become bread again...

(Edited because I remembered how to write proper English)

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: VanBurenVandal on 2002-12-08 15:41 ]</font>