[quahaug]

  Scientists say that if the signal came from 
  extraterrestrials, they are likely to be an extremely 
  advanced civilization, as the signal would have required a 
  2.2-gigawatt transmitter, vastly more powerful than any on 
  Earth.

What if we inadvertently witnessed the climactic end of two rival civilizations as they unleashed massive energy weapons upon each other, due to some kind of political unraveling of a dangerous arms race?

That would certainly explain the intensity, brevity and lack of repitition for this particular signal?

One might expect residual evidence of destructive forces at work, such as a debris field or hot gas clouds, but that assumes that the weapons are of a conventional nature we might readily understand.

[TrainedMonkey]

Would not explain narrow spectrum nor uniform intensity of the signal.

[mhurron]

Perhaps they were intending to send a signal with their shiny new super-powered transmitter and it overloaded and blew up.

They've been trying to work out the bugs in the design for the subsequent 25 years.

[quahaug]

Consider that a specific communications channel for a civilization/culture-specific technology were being jammed, as part of a hostile operation.

[wglb]

Interstellar DDoS?

[Zigurd]

My theory is that it encoded the uploaded consciousness of their best minds, along with a compelling argument that the only way to escape our gravity well is to upload our minds via a multigigawatt transmitter, along with instructions on how to build one (except those instructions won't work unless we propagate their signal). It might drive our civilization to the brink of our resource capacity to undertake this project, but it's the only way to propagate ourselves and survive, so what choice would we have?

[quahaug]

You can't upload consciousness. At best, all you can upload is a representation of personality and memories.

[vinceguidry]

If one created a physical substrate that neurons could transmit to and from, then embedded it in the brain, you could create consciousness in that substrate. A primitive analogue of this has been done where they attach electrodes to the tongue and fired them in a pattern suggestive of a video feed, eventually the brain started to understand it as another 'sense'.

Should one start brain-interacting directly with a substrate, the substrate could be powered independently and persist after separation. If separation occurred after natural death of the host, you could say that it 'uploaded' it's consciousness to the substrate.

[jtms]

plot twist: quahaug is an uploaded consciousness

[woah]

This would seem to be the most likely hypothesis, yes.

[quahaug]

Well, at the very least, if it seems to be a diliberate signal originating from an organized intelligence AND anomalous, then it might be useful to consider the intersection of those two characteristics.

Where do we see intelligence and anomalies converge?

- War, and other forms of political conflict

- Accidents, even if non-destructive, like when the cat sits on the keyboard

- Experimentation, and research into novel discoveries, unfamiliar to a civilization

- Distress, final acts of desperation, where no hope is provided by circumstance, but behavior is engaged in anyway, because there is no consequence

[bmelton]

Big ear sits upon the earth. It doesn't move, it just listens to whatever happens to be above it, and relies upon the rotation of the earth to simple multi-directionally. The Earth wobbles somewhat.

Let's assume that somebody else is broadcasting with a transmitter designed exactly like big ear, only in reverse (transmitting instead of receiving). Let's assume that they're very far away. Maybe their own planet wobbles.

What is the likelihood that we're even supposed to have heard the signal again? I mean, the way I'm imagining it is we have two drunk, blindfolded sailors, being randomly spun around as if before a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game, and each is holding a laser pointer, with no knowledge of each other. In the expanse of large open field, in the course of 1 year, how likely is it that the two laser beams will intersect? Ignoring the curvature of the earth, how much less likely is it the further apart they are? If they're, say, a light year apart (and have impractically powerful lasers), what is the likelihood then?

[quahaug]

I have a different mental model of the nature of the signal. I don't imagine that it was transmitted as a focused beam attenuated by an aperture. My thinking is that it was a sphere shaped pulse generated by an apparatus like a broadcasting tower, or perhaps discharged from a device that targets a specific band of the EM spectrum.

When you think of it as an event similar to an electromagnetic pulse from a hydrogen bomb, and not as a beam from a laser pointer, it changes the rationale for why it might not be a repeatable event. If it was a pulse and not a beam, it might still be prone to occlusion, in terms of whether pulse were generated on the surface of a planet, and on the side that only happened to be facing toward us at the time (not away), while our antenna was pointed at the night sky, but that still increases the probability of reception.

The alternative concept for a pulse, is that it was generated from a small space craft or space probe, and not on a planet capable of eclipsing the signal.

Considering that it lasted 72 seconds, that might fit the profile of a weapon, if you consider the duration of typical video of a mushroom cloud. 72 seconds might also fit the profile of a jamming signal generated while a weapon was en route, to prevent detection while being delivered to a target.

[unclebucknasty]

>Where do we see intelligence and anomalies converge?

- Randomness?

[quahaug]

But with what motive? If you were to create a single high-energy pulse, deliberately, and willfully apply a degree of entropy to scramble the signal, why?