Thursday 28 January 2021
Wednesday 27 January 2021
The non-Proxima Centauri Signal and why SETI Needs Shutting Down
Far be it for me to say "its odd" but I'm waiting to see the paper because either the original source DELIBERATELY gave misleading information or things are not adding up.
What makes me suspicious is that Seth ("Pant pooper if its Aliens") Shostak went around telling everyone that is was "highly probable -though I've seen none of the data" that this was terrestrial interference. Not seen any of the data but then again it will NEVER be aliens because if it was Shostak would have to hide under his bed. What a man to be involved in SETI -a man who is terrified of FINDING ETI!
This is why SETI should be handled by the people who can finance it as well as handle the possibility that alien life might exist (see any one of my books regarding this). A cluster of mini broadcaster-receiver satellites aliong the lines of Starlink sent off in different directions in the solar system might achieve more than Earth based facilities which, they keep jumping up and telling us, cannot tell the difference between someone warming up a cup of coffee in a microwave oven and a possible extra terrestrial signal.
Slash the SETI budget and the free mealers and get people who are willing to look and do more than sit on their asses. Think of the billions of $ that would save. Can't tell a microwave from alien signal. DO NOT want to find alien signals or civilisation. Sounds like a big con.
At the time that the US Department of Defence release UFO photos (a Batman balloon) and talk about possible extraterrestrial threats you have to wonder what game people are playing. Because Ufology and everyone else is being played.
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https://uk.news.yahoo.com/e-t-signal-proxima-centauri-122802301.html
News travels fast — at the lickety-split speed of light, potentially. Back in December, great attention was paid to a report that a mysterious radio signal appeared to have come from the vicinity of Proxima Centauri, the closest star to Earth.
Proxima Centauri, which is just 4.2 light-years from us, is known to host two planets. One of those two worlds, Proxima b, is slightly more massive than Earth and might be capable of supporting life as we know it.
The Breakthrough Listen project, part of the Breakthrough Initiatives group, made the recent detection using the Parkes radio telescope in Australia, dubbing the signal BLC1 for "Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1."
Breakthrough Initiatives is backed by Yuri Milner, a science and technology investor and philanthropist who founded the organization. Its Breakthrough Listen activity is a $100 million program of astronomical observations and analysis, the most comprehensive ever undertaken in the search for evidence of technological civilizations in the universe.
Space.com recently talked with Breakthrough Initiatives executive director Simon Peter "Pete" Worden about BLC1 and the search for alien "technosignatures" more generally; the protocols for announcing an ET detection; and the latest about the prospects for life on Venus, another study effort being undertaken by Breakthrough Initiatives.
Spoiler alert: Don't be heartbroken in learning how tough "radio-waving" between civilizations truly is!
Friday 22 January 2021
CE3K/AE Study Project Report No. 001: 1973 Eupora (Mississippi) Multi-Witness UFO Landing Event
26pp
A4
B&W
£6.00
Wednesday 13 January 2021
Serious Publishers....Where Are They?
The truth of the matter is that distributors block you and shops do likewise if you are a self publisher. I know because I have tried since 2009.
Online stores are nothing more than show and I say that after opening one in 2009 and there are currently 169 books covering 17 pages.
These are comics of various genres. Graphic novels of various genres and comic albums (48-100pp) on various genres.
There are the World Mystery Books (4 of them covering UFOs, cryptozoology, ghosts and more).
There is the Red Paper: Canids that lomng time naturalists have called "an incredible wildlife document" and "Explosive!" not to mention the album finally explaining what the Girt Dog of Innerdale (a cryptozoological mystery) was. There was also the look at Spring Heeled Jack and as detailed as you could want.
A quartet of books looking at the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI), UFOs and specifically encounters with "aliens" -good review from the Centre for UFO Studies and others.
All the text books are fully illustrated have rare and 'lost' photographs and everything is fully referenced.
I asked someone to count up how many views of posts relating to these books there had been up to 2019 on this and all the other blogs, Twitter, Pinterest and so on. 3.24 million. But the books do not sell and they are all printed in the region they are ordered from so there isn't even a concern about international postage -postage is local.
Comic shops will not stock the comics unless they are on "free trial" and kept off the books and the monopoly distributor in the UK does not find out. In other words it is what we used to call a "dead shop".
Regarding books the same applies but most bookstortes still left are "Remnant bookstores" selling off old stock. Those that do buy in new stock belong to chains and therefore will only take what head office says they can. And guess what? Head office only buys from distributors. Another "closed shop".
From the 1980s to the 1990s I submitted the same manuscripts to UK publishers. All rejected BECAUSE the persons reviewing the Ms for publishers were established UFO authors and, of course, that meant they were going to block anyone threatening their money-making monopoly (I have two of the "reader reviews" the publishers sent me so I know who put the boot in -they also used a large chunk of my data as their own later).
So when people ask whether I have tried a paying publisher my response is "Yes but as long as they employ reviewers with vested interests no outsider will have work in print" (just check the UKs UFO books output for the last 20 years to see what I mean).
Considering that we appear to be in a new age of illiteracy and where only fake sensationalist books are published and sold serious and factual writers will not get a look in.
Hey, if there is a serious, established publisher out there I'll send you copies of books. Just get in touch.
I have gone past the stage where decades of work is thrown away for a few pennies. I need to live and pay bills the same as everyone else.
In March all of the World Mystery and UFO books will be deleted from the store.
Friday 8 January 2021
Popular Mechanics asked: What Would Aliens Actually Look Like?
Popular Mechanic asked this question and the results appeared on the 6th August, 2014, in an article by John Brandon titled What Would Aliens Actually Look Like? We Asked 7 Experts. Here is that article with added images. https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/g1592/we-asked-7-experts-what-would-aliens-actually-look-like/
Movies and TV shows would have us believe aliens would look a bit like us, only with a big (bald) head, green skin, and crazy eyes. Don't believe it.
Movies and TV shows would have us believe aliens would look a bit like us, only with a big (bald) head, green skin, and crazy eyes. But we weren't satisfied with that old cliche. So we decided to ask sci-fi authors, science experts, and ET buffs what they think extraterrestrials really would look like.
Kevin Anderson: Science-fiction author
"Look at the incredible diversity of biotypes here on Earth, all of which evolved under the same planetary environment. I don't believe an alien species from an entirely different biochemical foundation would happen to turn out with two arms, two legs, two eyes, ears, nostrils . . . two genders, warm-blooded, and so on. But, for intelligence one would assume brain capacity, and therefore the body would need some sort of protective mechanism for the vital brain—an exoskeleton, a skull, something like that.
"To build tools they would need some kind of manipulative digits, like fingers (not necessarily an opposable thumb, maybe prehensile tentacles). There would have to be a reproductive system, but it could be budding, seeding, fission, egg laying—not necessarily live, warm-blooded birth. They would require some sort of sensory systems, the analogs of eyes, ears, smelling apparatuses. But their "eyes" would have evolved for the peak spectrum of their own sun, not necessarily ours.
"Do they live in a sea? In the clouds of a gas giant? On land? In a desert? In a jungle? They would need a way to eat or consume energy, and they would need to excrete waste. For intelligence, they'd need to communicate—by voice? Pheromones? Blinking phosphorescent patches?"
Darren Campo: TV producer and executive
"When it comes to film and TV, it's problematic to make a race of aliens that does not resemble humans. Actors have to play these roles. What aliens look like in the real world will depend on where they evolved. An alien that evolved in interstellar space would have very different needs from an alien that evolved on an Earthlike planet.
"There is one thing that is nearly certain: an alien life form will be symmetrical. Everything we know of that grows follows a symmetrical pattern. Cut a tree in half lengthwise, the branches and roots on one side would be fairly similar to the other. The same applies to humans and all living growth, even inorganic growth such as crystals and galaxies.
"The size and shape of the alien would be determined by gravity, ambient density, and source of energy. Plantlike aliens are unlikely because photosynthesis doesn't encourage complex survival strategies. The need to chase food favors mobile life. If such life evolved in a thick atmosphere, it's likely to be a horizontal creature. A thinner atmosphere would favor the most vertical animals. Two legs and two arms are more efficient than four legs, so incorporating the rule of symmetry, it's not unlikely that aliens would have evolved just like humans: bipedal and upright.
"When we consider that 95 percent of the universe is not perceptible by our senses or technology (dark matter and energy), then it's most likely that's where the aliens are. So one might say most aliens don't look like anything because they are invisible."
Aaron Rosenberg: Science-fiction author
"Never mind the gaunt, nearly skeletal figure with the long talons and the scorpion-like tail and the mouth full of razor teeth. Never mind the little green or gray men with oversize craniums and oversize eyes and tiny mouths. Never mind the cat-men or lizard-men or dog-men or people with blue skin and strange, tattoo-like markings or odd brow ridges or pointier ears. Why would an alien look that similar to us?
"Bilateral symmetry is actually a pretty crappy design, when you think about it. Yes, it looks nice and even but what's the point? Why have two sides exactly the same when you could have something completely different on the other side? Even the Daleks figured this one out—they had a sucker arm on one side and a laser on the other. And bipedal? Ridiculous—one good push and we fall over. Why would another world's race evolve with that exact same design flaw? Why would another world's race grow eyes and a nose and a tongue and all the other fiddly bits we have? They wouldn't.
"Living beings evolve in response to their environment. We grew opposable thumbs so we could better grasp objects. Monkeys developed prehensile tails for the same reason. We have eyes because light breaks down into the visible end of the electromagnetic spectrum here.
"But if we had occurred on a completely different world, with different temperatures and topography and flora and fauna, we would have evolved differently. And if that other world had a completely different chemical composition, so would we. All life on Earth is carbon-based, but that wouldn't be the case elsewhere. Life forms could be silicon-based or iron-based or anything else at all. They could have any number of arms and legs—or none at all.
"Perhaps life on other planets evolved without physical form or with no fixed form—perhaps there are aliens who are nothing more than sentient clouds, or who have mutable bodies that can alter to suit the needs of the moment. Maybe they can sail through space unaided, and use stellar radiation for a food source and a sensory array, detecting changes in the radiation the same way bats detect sound waves. Who needs eyes and ears when your entire being resonates? Who needs a distinct brain when your consciousness is spread throughout just like our nerve endings are with us? Why have skin when your form is held together by electrostatic shock and mental control, and can condense or expand at will?
"There are plenty of creatures here on Earth that are so astoundingly different from us that we can barely comprehend them. Try watching an octopus pull itself through a tiny crack in a glass tank sometime, or examine a tobacco hornworm, or look at a praying mantis up close. Then think about how small our planet is compared with the universe as a whole—it's like finding the weirdest shaped M&M in the bag, and then realizing that you're in an entire candy store filled with literally thousands of other kinds of candy, most of which you've never even heard of before. A real alien would be so far from anything we've ever imagined that we would barely be able to comprehend its existence. And we would seem just as completely, bafflingly bizarre to it."
Harry E. Keller:
Chemistry professor,
'Somewhere in the universe, there must be, have been, or will be other advanced civilizations. The chances of anyone alive today seeing or even communicating with them are very slim. However, such problems should not stop us from imagining what they might be like.
"First, a real alien is bilaterally symmetrical, endothermic with excellent manipulative abilities, and has a hard container for a brain.
"Eyes? Of course. You have to see to build a civilization. The squid has better eyes than we do, and the eye seems to have evolved separately a few times at least. Our alien will have eyes that may only resemble ours superficially. A lens and iris are almost an absolute requirement. The whites do not have to be white. Neither does the iris have to be colored in anything like the way ours are. How many eyes? One just will not do. Inability to perceive distance will lead to rapid extinction. Unless you can find a good reason for it, extra eyes create evolutionary baggage and will not persist, spiders not withstanding. Eyes being important, they will be recessed and capable of being covered, as necessary. Our aliens are not likely to be bug-eyed, although we cannot totally rule that out.
"Nose? An alien must have the means to breathe. It must be symmetrical. The nose does not have to be in the middle of a face, although that is convenient for some purposes such as sharing the air pipe with a mouth for times of exertion. You can imagine other arrangements.
"Mouth? Must have means for ingestion of food. All large animals have some means to capture and swallow food. Some masticate it; others do not. Teeth are rather common on Earth but other systems of eating are possible. The problem is that plants and animals have been in an evolutionary war for millenia. We inherit the outcome of that war. Teeth were necessary to eat plants that became more fibrous, an evolutionary reaction to being eaten. There are other ways to sheer off plant food, such as what birds do. They 'chew' in their gizzards.
"Legs? Most certainly. Other means of locomotion will be relatively slow and be relegated to armored animals and of those living in holes. Neither of these lifestyles will lead naturally to greater intelligence. How many legs? In our case, we adapted the forelegs for manipulation from animals with four legs. No land animals with endoskeletons have more legs. The implication is that aliens with two legs are more likely than those with four.
"Fur? Hair? Feathers? Scales? Something else truly alien? The skin covering could be anything that makes sense. Real feathers are not so likely. Because feathers are used for flight, brains will be small. Scales are unlikely because they are particularly well-adapted for ectotherms, although a scaly sort of skin might be possible. Fur versus hair is hard to sort out because of my inherent bias. Fur has good reasons for being that are not related to intelligence. If furry, our aliens probably have short fur.
"Head? If you define head as a bony enclosure for the brain as well as the location for eyes, nose, and mouth, then it's likely. The nose could be located above or below the mouth. Above works better for swimming, but that's not a strict evolutionary requirement.
"Neck? Not at all necessary. Useful to swivel the head, but you can imagine other ways to look around. It's an annoying place for big cats to grab and strangle you with their powerful mouths.
"Arms? You must have something with which to manipulate things. Tentacles are unlikely because of their inability to perform fine manipulation. They usually have suckers on them and a very different purpose than toolmaking. The number of joints could be greater, and the direction of bend could be different.
"Fingers? You must have a way to grab tightly and a way to pick up small objects and twist and turn them. Two fingers are probably too few. Five is overkill. Three or four (as cartoon characters have) is about right. Our three joints in our fingers is about right. One would not do. Two, as with our thumbs, is unlikely."
Bernard Bates:
Physics professor,
"An octopus is a good example of an advanced-alien analogue on Earth. Octopuses are quite (probably human-level) intelligent and live in a totally alien environment (compared with ours). Evolution has had to find novel solutions to the pressures they're under—pressures completely different than those that shaped mammals on land.
"Dolphins and chimpanzees are extremely close to us—we're all mammals. The last common ancestor for humans and dolphins was around 100 million years ago, and for humans and chimpanzees was about 10 million years ago. Most of the evolutionary choices leading to intelligence were probably made before the splits occurred. The last common ancestor between mammals and octopuses is much, much further back in time, probably 800 million years ago.
"Aliens with advanced technology would have to be on land (technology needs fire to kick-start it). What we would expect in order to develop a technology comparable to ours? Hands with fingers (for delicate, precise manipulation) are important. At least two legs are needed for locomotion. If it has four legs, think centaurs—you need those hands to build things.
"You need binocular vision to judge distance (to prey). Elevated head to see predators. Eyes near the brain to reduce the time delay (or degradation) of the visual signal. Sound and smell sensors (ears and nose). Your survival chances improve if you can use all of the ways you can to detect food, mates, and predators. Living in an atmosphere means sounds and smells will arrive before the stinky, noisy predator."
Nnedi Okorafor: Sci-fi author
"Three things are generally intrinsic about human beings:
1. We think we know everything.
2. We think everything is about us.
3. We need things to be about us in order to care.
Thus, in most of our stories about aliens, the aliens come because of us (be it to kill, enslave, or study us) or to take things that are dear to us. We are also usually the first who make contact with the aliens, and they almost always look something like us or like something familiar to us.
"I believe aliens exist. However, I don't pay much mind to the little-green-men mythology. I don't think aliens have to be humanoid, carbon-based, or even alive by our definition of alive. Human beings aren't made to survive in space. If aliens arrive on Earth here, it means they have survived in space and have the means to adapt to our atmosphere. I think it highly possible that they'll be nothing like us.
"In my novel Lagoon, the aliens that show up in
"I don't see why aliens couldn't be microscopic, only be seen at wavelengths beyond human detection, be built in a way so outside of human understanding that to look upon them would cause one to faint. I don't think aliens have been, are, will be what we are expecting."
Tobias Buckell: Sci-fi author
"Aliens with pointy ears and bumpy foreheads are a way
for
"We have examples of aliens right here on Earth to look toward that might give us a hint of what an alien intelligence would look like. Octopuses and squids exhibit startlingly intelligent responses and learning, and the form of their bodies is designed for an environment alien to our own. Tentacles and large brains seems to be a fantastic form for low-gravity or aquatic environments. Creatures that may communicate by flashing colors across their skin. Science fiction has a long history of exploring hard-to-understand tentacled horrors.
"An article about the gears found in plant hoppers' legs has gotten a lot of attention online. The idea of biology and evolution already using cogs leads one to wonder what else might exist. Minds that evolved silicon circuitry through natural selection? Steampunk, radiation-powered life forms that we couldn't even approach? Thought experiments can get rather mind-boggling. Nature always surprises.
"Talking and reacting to alien behavior will be the hardest. We already struggle to keep patient enough to understand other cultures and differences within our own human cultures. Dolphins, octopuses, elephants—these all seem to be higher-order thinkers, yet we cannot communicate well with them nor do we particularly share the planet well. What will an alien encounter be like? How will their actions seem?
"In short, I'd assume things would be easily misunderstood, as we all come with an existing load of baggage about such an encounter. And their actions will depend a great deal on the environs they come from, and the nature of their groups. Are they solitary? Or prefer herds or small bands? What would be the mind of an intelligent predator who normally lives alone?
If we do find other life, I have to assume that it would hint that a great deal of life is possible. We may encounter all of the above. Creatures like us, and yet so different from us we can barely understand them. It might be a plethora of minds and body types, much like the world is filled now with a wide variety of intelligences and forms. It might be quite overwhelming . . ."
---------------------------fin-------------------------------------
If you look up Bernard Bates you will find the following
Fall 2016 Courses
SSI2-123 SETI Seminar
Mon, Wed, Fri 11:00-11:50 (Wyatt 204)
Physics 111 LABS
Tuesday 9:30-12:00 and 1:00-3:30 (Harned 135)
STS 361 Mars Exploration
Mon, Wed, Fri 9:00-9:50 (Harned 143)
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209, Astrophysics
So at least he has some idea what he is talking about. He was even asked the same question in another feature https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/if-alien-life-exists-in-solar-system-may-look-like-this-aurora-hydrothermal-vent/
Then we have Dr Harry E. Keller whose biography reads: “Dr. Harry Keller founded Smart Science® Education Inc. in 1981 and incorporated in 1983. After 15 years of providing contract consulting services mostly to Fortune 500 companies, he and his partner created the Smart Science® technologies to provide high-quality science learning experiences to students through the Internet. The system now has 200 online experiential science lessons with real experiments and hands-on measurement covering all major sciences for grades 3-14, and its core technologies have been patented.”
Campo is SVP Programming, Production, Dev & Content Strategy, WarnerMedia truTV, Food Network, CBS, NYU Media & Tech Professor. Hmm, so not heavily involved in exobiology.
Kevin James Anderson is an American science fiction author. He has written spin-off novels for Star Wars, StarCraft, Titan A.E. and The X-Files, and with Brian Herbert is the co-author of the Dune prequel series.
Nnedi Okorafor is a Nigerian-American author of Africanfuturism and Africanjujuism for children and adults. Her works include WHO FEARS DEATH (in development at HBO into a TV series), the BINTI novella trilogy, THE BOOK OF PHOENIX, the AKATA books and LAGOON.
This means we have at least two scientists and a media man and sci fi authors. When it comes to this subject it is all speculation and based on what we know of life on Earth. Incidentally, having written some Star Trek material is not really counted as experience in exobiology J
I had expected that Popular Mechanics might by-pass popularism and being trendy and head straight to biologists who are active in the field. It is a pity then that they let the ball slip for the most part. If we find life on any planet or moon within our solar system (and the chances seem likely) then it will be microbial or bacterial. I think that we can rule out these visiting Earth in a flying saucer any time soon.
As I have previously noted; for decades I scoured CE3K/AE reports for non-humanoid entity reports because the scientists with the loudest mouths told us that is what we should expect –not humanoid forms. Then, others chimed in and stated that the humanoid form is what we should expect –amongst these experts (“X”= The Unknown and “Spurt” is a drip under pressure) were the former “non humanoid” loud mouths.
The problem is that we only have one Petri dish to base everything on –life on Earth (and even that has not been fully studied because more new species are still being found each month). We have bickering going on amongst scientists –a lot of whom are hoping and praying that we never come across alien life through fear. Not one scientific “name” has so far looked into the CE3K/AE data to assess it because “UFOs are silly season stories” –yet there is the official French space agency unit that looks at reports.
In the latest book I posed the question; who do you report a UFO landing to? A German journalist looked into this a few years back and he found that there appeared to be no official policy on the scenario. I contacted NASA as well as the European Space Agency and asked if there was even a theoretical plan for any alien craft landing on Earth and someone needing to phone an official and calmly report: “Uh, I have a sort of First Contact scenario here…help?” Nothing.
On what happens if an alien signal is received or craft is detected out in space there I a bureaucratic protocol –cited in full in Beyond UFO Contact.
What is really required is for biologists and naturalists to look at every possible scenario in which intelligent life might develop and what it might look like and from there we have a basis to develop things further.
Above: walking plants, dinosaur type creature and opther basic forms of lifeare talked about but when it comes to intelligent life... see https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/what-would-alien-life-actually-look-like/
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With CE3K/AE reports what we really need are trained psychologists who could accompany investigators and would know what to look for because in the past sleep paralysis and hypnagogic states have been accepted as ‘evidence’ of real events. The point is not to label someone a “nut” but, if genuine and experiencing altered states then they can be referred to a doctor if they wish.
Again, and I know people get fed up with me stating this but witnesses/percipients are human beings not cash cows for TV or books. Those Ufologists who screech the loudest over this because they “do” are usually the ones who do not.
I cannot even guess at how many reports are contained in my
world wide data base but I’m guessing “thousands” about covers it. They are not
all genuine –some are hoaxes- others are misidentifications, others involve “Psychological”
explanations and most single witness reports tend to be given a low credibility
rating unless there are exceptional circumstances. Many –very many- were never even investigated but accepted as
genuine on a single or several press clippings. If we throw most of those out
we might be left with 100 or so cases. Two 1973 cases –
But I’ll stop there before I go off on yet another rant. I will end by7 stating that we really need to step up on the exobiology side of things.
https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/research/astrobiology-at-nasa/exobiology/
Thursday 7 January 2021
Was the mystery radio signal really from Proxima Centauri? UP-DATED
There seems to be some incredible theorising -some bordering on fantasy- since this news item was leaked. Hopefully, this article by Paul Scott Anderson on Earthsky will make things clearer. See my notes at the end.
Was this mystery radio signal really from Proxima Centauri?
The Parkes radio telescope at Parkes Observatory in New South Wales, Australia. Astronomers using the telescope detected what appeared to be a radio signal coming from the direction of Proxima Centauri in April and May 2019. Image via Daniel John Reardon/ Wikimedia Commons.
Earlier this month, we told you about a possible source for the famous Wow! signal, first detected in 1977. Since its detection, the Wow! signal has been, in the opinion of many scientists engaged with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), the best candidate for an alien radio signal yet found. The 1977 Wow! signal was heard only once. It was never fully confirmed and remains unexplained to this day. But now, a new possible signal has been found, dubbed by some as Wow! signal 2020. And guess what? It appears to come from Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our sun.
EarthSky 2021 lunar calendars are available! Order now. Going fast!
The news comes from an apparent leak to The Guardian newspaper, which ran the story on December 17, 2020. What makes this detection unique and rather baffling is that the signal, narrowband and needle-sharp at 982.002 MHz, came from the direction of Proxima, which is so close to us, only about 4 light-years away. Astronomers with Breakthrough Listen first detected the signal on April 29, 2019, using the Parkes radio telescope at Parkes Observatory in Australia, but it was not actually found in the data until late October of this year. Two papers detailing the discovery and the analysis are reportedly due to come out sometime in early 2021.
The astronomers were not named in The Guardian article, so it seemed that the news was leaked by someone to the paper, hence the anonymity. By the next day, December 18, the story had been pretty much verified, although tempered with an abundance of caution. As mentioned in The Guardian:
The latest ‘signal’ is likely to have a mundane explanation too, but the direction of the narrow beam, around 980 MHz, and an apparent shift in its frequency said to be consistent with the movement of a planet have added to the tantalizing nature of the finding. Scientists are now preparing a paper on the beam, named BLC1, for Breakthrough Listen, the project to search for evidence of life in space, The Guardian understands.
As tends to happen, the story spread quickly, with commentary from various astronomers and other scientists about what it might be.
Artist’s concept of Proxima Centauri b, which is about 1.3 times the mass of Earth and orbits within the star’s habitable zone where liquid water could exist. Could the signal actually be from this planet? Maybe, but some features of the signal don’t seem to fit that scenario. Image via ESO/ M. Kornmesser/ Phys.org.
A follow-up article in Scientific American by Jonathan O’Callaghan and Lee Billings on December 18 has provided some additional details. Andrew Siemion at the University of California, Berkeley and director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center, is quoted as saying:
It has some particular properties that caused it to pass many of our checks, and we cannot yet explain it. We don’t know of any natural way to compress electromagnetic energy into a single bin in frequency. For the moment, the only source that we know of is technological.
There is also another good article at National Geographic by Nadia Drake.
The signal has the characteristics of being artificial, so then the question becomes “is it ours?” Many potential candidate signals are found, but the vast majority are soon found to be explained by terrestrial sources, satellites in space, errors, etc. As Jason Wright at Penn State University told Scientific American:
If you see such a signal and it’s not coming from the surface of Earth, you know you have detected extraterrestrial technology. Unfortunately, humans have launched a lot of extraterrestrial technology.
Sofia Sheikh at Penn State University, who headed the subsequent analysis for Breakthrough Listen and is the lead author on the upcoming paper, told National Geographic:
Only human technology seems to produce signals like that. Our WiFi, our cell towers, our GPS, our satellite radio, all of this looks exactly like the signals that we’re searching for, which makes it very hard to tell if something is from space or from human-generated technology.
A candidate signal must go through a series of screening filters before it can be seriously treated as a true potentially alien signal. This one has, so far, according to Sheikh:
It’s the most exciting signal that we’ve found in the Breakthrough Listen project, because we haven’t had a signal jump through this many of our filters before.
The famous “Wow! signal” detected by the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio State University on August 15, 1977. Image via Big Ear Radio Observatory/ North American AstroPhysical Observatory (NAAPO)/ Wikipedia.
The candidate signal is now being referred to as Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1, or BLC1.
The detection was made as part of an overall study of Proxima Centauri by Breakthrough Listen. It was first noticed in the data by intern Shane Smith in late October this year as the data from 2019 was being re-analyzed, which is why no alert was sent out to other observatories back in 2019, as some people have questioned (that being normal SETI protocol). The signal was very narrow, 982.002 MHz to be exact. It was seen in five of the 30-minute long observations by the Parkes telescope, over a 30-hour period.
Given past history, it is most likely that a terrestrial human-made cause will be found, but the scientists involved are continuing to study it with much interest, and so far, they haven’t been able to identify the culprit.
Another point to note is that the signal apparently came from the direction of Proxima Centauri, but it’s not a slam-dunk that the star really is the source. It could also have been a source within the 16-arcminute (1/60 of a degree) beamwidth of the telescope that happened to be near Proxima Centauri in the sky from our vantage point. It also appears to a simple signal, with no modulation, just a single tone. As Siemion said:
BLC1 is, for all intents and purposes, just a tone, just one note. It has absolutely no additional features that we can discern at this point.
The signal does drift, as might be expected for a signal from an orbiting planet, but it is in the opposite direction of what would normally be expected. Sheikh said:
We would expect the signal to be going down in frequency like a trombone. What we see instead is like a slide whistle, the frequency goes up.
What all of this means exactly isn’t clear yet. Wright has made some interesting observations on Twitter, however:
So far, the signal hasn’t been seen again, just like with the Wow! signal in 1977. Another detection would help scientists determine just where it actually came from. As noted by Wright above, it’s possible that the signal didn’t come from Proxima Centauri at all, but rather another source that happened to be close to the star in the sky at the time, within the beamwidth of the telescope. The fact that it “reappeared” five times during the 30-minute observation windows, over a period of three hours, is interesting. That means when the telescope was briefly pointed away from the star, the signal disappeared, but came back when the telescope was looking at the star again, five times in all. That’s a seemingly good indication the signal did come from space, but more work is needed to see if it could have been an earthly satellite.
Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the sun, only 4.2 light-years away, and is a red dwarf with at least two known planets. One of those planets, Proxima Centauri b, is just a bit larger than Earth, and orbits within the habitable zone of the star, the region where temperatures could allow liquid water to exist. The other planet, Proxima Centauri c, is about seven times more massive than our Earth.
But little else is known about these worlds so far, and the star itself is very volatile, emitting powerful flares of ionizing radiation. Proxima Centauri b in particular is subject to this radiation, even though it is in the habitable zone, so whether it is actually potentially habitable is far from certain at this point.
Sofia Sheikh at Penn State University, who headed the analysis for Breakthrough Listen and is the lead author on the upcoming paper. Image via Penn State University.
Also, what are the odds that another technological civilization would be located at the very nearest star to us? With so many billions of stars in our galaxy? The odds seem very much against it, but all we can do is follow the data and evidence as we learn it. The signal seemingly must either be from Proxima Centauri, another unrelated source within the beamwidth of the telescope, or from terrestrial interference. Past experience suggests the third option, but there is still a lot more analysis to be done.
Stay tuned for updates on this intriguing discovery. If nothing else, BLC1 has given us a fascinating new mystery to try and solve!
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Some Ufologists and "other types" are stating that the signal came FROM Proxima Centauri but it did not. It came from a wide arc of space around the star and that is a vast amount of space. I'll give you a practical example.
While I was in Junior School, coming up to 11 years old, I was in the playground and decided to get my own back on Chris who had outrageously snow-balled me earlier. So, there he was directly ahead of me. I made a snowball and threw it....it passed Chris and hit a teacher who looked around with a less than happy face. Teacher knew which direction the snowball had come from but there were at least 7 other pupils -including Chris. Unless someone put their hand up and shouted "That was me!" (riiight) the teacher had no idea who threw it.
This BLC1 is the same thing. It came (seemingly) from the direction of Proxima Centauri which is the "Chris" in the respect. How far a saignal travelled and for how long is what the team needs to calculate if this is a genuine signal. I hope it is because that means a great deal. Unlikely that BLC1 is from any civilization that might be responsible for UFO incidents (logically, it is pointless signalling out into space and a specific (IF it was aimed at Earth -we may have just got in the way) target if you are already there unless the signal was being sent to a Lurker (see the new book it explains what Lurkers are).
We are dealing with cautious astronomers here who need facts before announcing anything and if it was not a signal we'll hear all the usual conspiracy and cover up crap for years. Some SETI astronomers need to be removed from their jobs -such as Mr Shostok who seems near to wetting his pants in fear at the possibility of intelligent life in space (I think he just wanted an easy job paying good money with free meal tickets).
EVERY possibility has to be ruled out until someone can say "It WAS a signal" -at which point the Shostoks can jump in to scream "No!" and get all the media attention they like (it means more money and free dinners).
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