Subj: SETI Signals / UFO Forum Date: 98-06-12 15:09:09 EDT From: Iwonder414 To: Phikent In a message dated 98-06-12 12:20:49 EDT, davew@exosci.com writes: << Sunday Times of London, by Steve Farrar & Alex McGregor, Some of the world's leading astronomers revealed last week that they have collected more than 100 unexplained radio signals during routine surveillance of space. >> ----------------- Forwarded Message: Subj: exoScience - SETI Signals / UFO Forum Date: 98-06-12 12:20:49 EDT From: davew@exosci.com (David Watanabe ( www.exosci.com )) Reply-to: davew@exosci.com To: UFO@exosci.com exoScience UFO * 6/12/98 * exosci.com/ufo * SCIENTISTS COLLECT OVER 100 UNNATURAL SETI SIGNALS What do you think? : http://exosci.com/ufo/forum/ -> NEW exoScience UFO Public Discussion Sunday Times of London, by Steve Farrar & Alex McGregor, Some of the world's leading astronomers revealed last week that they have collected more than 100 unexplained radio signals during routine surveillance of space. These faint, pure tones have no natural origin and could have been created artificially, the scientists said. They do not rule out the astonishing possibility that this strange radio traffic could have extra-terrestrial origins. Most of the signals have been picked up by American radio telescopes managed by the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI) in Mountain View, California, set up in 1988 to study radio static in space and scan it for material that could be evidence of alien contact. A few have also been logged by British astronomers studying stars and galaxies with the Lovell telescope at Jodrell Bank, near Macclesfield in Cheshire. "It's tempting to hypothesise that at least some of these seductive signals were truly from ET and that they vanished from the ether when the extra-terrestrials turned off their transmitters or otherwise went off air before we could verify the message," said Dr Seth Shostak, SETI's public programmes scientist. Alternatively, he said, it was possible they were simply the product of some kind of local interference that did not repeat when the astronomers tried to relocate the rogue signals. SETI, which was formed by scientists including Carl Sagan and received funding from Nasa until 1993, has yet to discover any clear, repeated radio pattern that might hint at the existence of alien intelligence in the universe. The short, indistinct signals that have been detected are a far cry from the resounding pulses featured in the movie Contact, in which Jodie Foster played a SETI astronomer who deciphered radio contact with aliens. Foster's signed photograph is pinned to a wall in SETI's Silicon Valley office. None of the signals has been heard by human ears - they were all picked up by computers monitoring radio telescopes. "If you could hear the signal at the frequency it is received, it would sound like a faint whistle, a pure tone which could only be made by a transmitter. As far as we know, nature can't make a pure sound," said Shostak. Each time one of these signals is detected by a radio telescope, an alarm alerts SETI astronomers, who work around the clock. None has yet been pinpointed or recorded a second time, so that scientists have been denied the chance of making a study of their source or composition. SETI is stepping up efforts to increase its chances of relocating one of these signals and has secured agreement to use the world's largest radio telescope - which was featured in the James Bond film GoldenEye - at Arecibo in Puerto Rico. The Americans are also negotiating with British astronomers to launch a five-year project to allow speedy verification and tracking of these elusive noises. Whenever SETI identifies a suspect signal, radio telescopes at Jodrell Bank will scan the same section of the sky to locate it. In this way the scientists can rule out possible terrestrial interference from radar, traffic and even electric fences as a cause. "I'm sure there are signals that have come and gone that we couldn 't get to the bottom of. That's not to say it's little green men trying to communicate with us, but we just don't know," said Dr Tom Muxlow, an astronomer at the British radio astronomy observatory. He disclosed that Jodrell Bank had picked up about six rogue signals. The possibility that the signals have extra-terrestrial origins cannot be ignored, according to Nobel laureate Tony Hewish, emeritus professor of radio astronomy at Cambridge University. In 1967 Hewish and Jocelyn Bell, a student, believed they had found evidence of an alien first contact when they detected a regular pulse of radio signals coming from a distant star. "It all had an air of unreality about it, but for a month we thought it was possible that the signals were coming from intelligent life on another planet. When radio astronomers pick up signals that are very peculiar they take it with a big pinch of salt, but you cannot remove the possibility," said Hewish. Instead, they had found a pulsar, a rapidly spinning neutron star, a discovery for which Hewish won a Nobel prize in 1974. Shostak is not put off by the prospect that any signal from an alien world would probably be indecipherable. "If we heard from an ET , it would be from a civilisation that is a long way ahead of us, maybe even a million years more advanced than we are," he said. What do you think? : http://exosci.com/ufo/forum/ -> NEW exoScience UFO Public Discussion * EXOSCIENCE UFO PUBLIC DISCUSSION As you may have noticed by the note at the top, the exoScience UFO Public Discussion has opened!! Speak your mind about these important topics. Anything UFO / space / exobiological goes! (any offensive posters will be dealt with promptly! - relax in an environment free of any violent skeptics) http://exosci.com/ufo/forum/ Check it out!! Post a lot! David Watanabe davew@exosci.com ____________________________________________________ exoScience UFO http://exosci.com/ufo/ **************************************************** To SUBSCRIBE / UNSUBSCRIBE, send email to: davew@exosci.com with either "subscribe ufo" or "unsubscribe ufo" (no quotation marks) in the SUBJECT. **************************************************** To POST, send email for approval to: davew@exosci.com ____________________________________________________ Copyright (c) 1998 David Watanabe - davew@exosci.com "I think I ripped a hole in the spacetime continuum" -Ajax (Duckman)