The Ancients might be correct! (potential SG-U season 2 spoiler)

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Seems as though SG-U might be on to something. No sooner had I watched the Season 2 episode where Rush reveals that the Ancients had detected signals from before the Big Bang in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) than, in real life, Roger Penrose announcles that he and his coworkers might have found evidence of such signals, which he claims lends credence to his theory of Conformal Cyclic Cosmology.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11837869

http://arxiv.org/abs/1011.3706

No suggestion that the patterns in the CMB are intelligent, of course, but it makes you think. If the SG-U writers are basing their story arc on this sort of science, I'm impressed.

 

[Kirby]

If the SG-U writers are basing their story arc on this sort of science, I'm impressed.

After reading Joe Mallozzi's blog for several I don't think the Stargate producers/writers have the capability to base anything on hard science. The impression that I get is these guys are just knuckleheaded action/comedy writers.

The one lone exception is story consultant John Scalzi who is a hell of a writer. Since he doesn't actually write anything for Stargate, I don't know how his role fits in with the rest of the writing staff.

 

[Kpnuts]

Agreed, I think you're giving the writer's waaaay too much credit here. Mallozi and co are basically obnoxious idiots

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Agreed, I think you're giving the writer's waaaay too much credit here. Mallozi and co are basically obnoxious idiots

Maybe they just got lucky.

 

[bigdaddy]

Agreed, I think you're giving the writer's waaaay too much credit here. Mallozi and co are basically obnoxious idiots

Basically?

They got lucky. That's it. I'd be amazed if they had any real plan besides a very VERY basic outline.

 

[Sisko_is_my_captain]

The idea of secret codes written in the fabric of existence has been around for some time. Carl Sagan's Contact referred to a code found in pi, for example.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

The idea of secret codes written in the fabric of existence has been around for some time. Carl Sagan's Contact referred to a code found in pi, for example.

In any infinitely long, random sequence, you can probably find patterns that resemble anything you can imagine -- including images of a naked Richard Nixon, the current Pope having sex with a donkey, and Gandhi shooting JFK from the grassy knoll.

 

[Harvey]

Correct, but I think CONTACT suggested the numbers recurred often enough to suggest that it wasn't a random occurance. Been about nine years since I read the book, however.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Correct, but I think CONTACT suggested the numbers recurred often enough to suggest that it wasn't a random occurance. Been about nine years since I read the book, however.

Yeah, I think the very low probablility (presumably, a several-sigma deviation) of finding a highly correlated sequence (a digital approximation of a circle, IIRC) was the trigger that alerted Arroway. Similarly, with the concentric ring patterns being detected in the CMB, although in this case, they were deliberately looking for circular patterns of unusually low variance, and not for any other patterns such as ellipses or lines. I've yet to see a map showing the many such patterns that they have supposedly detected. It makes you wonder what other "signals" can be picked out from the noise.