A
study by Canadian astronomers has attracted considerable attention,
because the astronomers claim that they may have found evidence of
extraterrestrial civilizations. The
astronomers used spectra, which is what results when you pass the
light from a star through a scientific instrument such as a
spectrograph, which splits up the light into component parts. The
astronomers say they have picked up irregularities in the spectra of
234 stars.
Viewed
without any transformation or alteration, the “signals” in
question look completely natural. But the astronomers monkeyed with
the data to get it to cough up some blips.
The
paper gives figures such as the one below, showing something received
from one particular star.
But
this data is not raw data from the star. It is data that has been
transformed by the astronomers, who keep telling us in their paper
that they are showing a “Fourier modulus of the frequency spectrum
(after subtraction of its smoothed spectrum).” That's some kind of
abstruse mathematical contortion – something many times more
complicated than an average. Why should we be impressed by some kind
of blip that emerges only after some statistical or mathematical
tinkering has been done? There are 101 ways to massage data to get it
to produce some type of blip, if you are looking for some type of
blip to appear.
Press
reports claim that these “signals” match exactly signals
predicted in a 2012 paper. But that isn't actually true. The 2012
paper shows a type of blip that might appear in a stellar spectrum,
but it shows a great big blip. The type of blips shown in the new
paper by the Canadians are only small blips.
Here
is the graph shown in the 2012 paper, which is just a "we might get signals like this some day" type of graph:
The graph above shows a blip much, much more dramatic than the type of blips shown in the paper of the Canadian astronomers.
I
find it rather hard to believe the idea that extraterrestrials would
artificially modify the radiation coming from their stars (presumably
a very expensive business) in the hopes that such signals would be
detected by people on other planets who just happened to apply a
Fourier transform (plus an additional subtraction) to such signals.
Such a message would be merely a “we are here” type of message
that would not transmit semantic content, such as you can transmit in
a radio message. But if you are going to go to all the trouble of
trying to communicate with planets outside of you, why not use radio
signals, which allow you to send detailed, meaningful content (such
as a description of what your planet is like, and what type of beings
live on it)?
Then
there is the coincidence problem. Since the stars in question are
scattered throughout space, if we are to believe that most of the
spectra blips were produced by extraterrestrials, we would have to
believe that coincidentally more than 100 extraterrestrial
civilizations decided to use the same weird technique for signaling
their existence, a technique that is not one of the five main
techniques we would think extraterrestrials would use. Such a
coincidence seems far-fetched.
I
am also troubled by the fact that the signal is not directly found in
the data, but only emerges after some monkeying with the signal that
is not straightforward. We can imagine a UFO investigator presenting
similar evidence:
UFO
Investigator: Here's my photo showing a disk-shaped UFO in the
sky. Pretty impressive, eh?
Skeptic:
Wow, nice work. So that's the original photo?
UFO
Investigator: No, the UFO only showed up after I applied multiple
transformations to the photo. First, I applied a “Fish eye”
transformation. Then I performed a “horizontal shift”
transformation. Only then did the disk-shaped UFO show up.
Skeptic:
Get outta here, that's
worthless. Try showing me an unaltered photo!
What
is very strange is that astronomers seem to be ignoring evidence of
unexplained sky anomalies and UFO's in our own skies, but then they
try to go torturing data from other stars until it drips out signs of
extraterrestrials. There are very many unaltered photos and videos
of unexplained phenomena in our own skies. Such photos and videos do
not use exotic transformation techniques to produce evidence of
something unusual. There is also abundant eyewitness testimony, and
the witnesses were not wearing “special light transformation”
glasses when they saw what they saw. Why should not such things be
regarded as something much more substantial than evidence that only
emerges when you have massaged data until it produces the effect you
are looking for?
Why
might a scientist ignore a great deal of photographs, videos, and
eyewitness sightings, all suggesting evidence of something
unexplained or extraterrestrial in our skies, but instead prefer to
focus on some minor blips from distant stars that only emerge after
some contrived methodology in which raw data is massaged until it
looks very different? Perhaps the explanation has something to do
with snobbery. All those UFO photos and videos are taken by
ordinary citizens. There seems to be an unfortunate tendency among
the very clannish scientific community for scientists to think along
the lines of, “An observation doesn't count unless it was produced
by someone in our little country club.” This type of snooty
elitism makes no sense.
Besides
a kind of people snobbery, I think there's also a kind of
technological snobbery going on. A scientist may prefer some mildly
suggestive observation produced by some fancy expensive piece of
scientific equipment, rather than accept a much more substantial
observation made by someone using some $80 point-and-click camera.
This also makes no sense, since the reliability of an observation has
no relation to how complicated or expensive was the equipment used to
produce it. In fact, the fancier the equipment, the greater the
opportunities for error.