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Has a SETI Signal Been Detected
January 16, 2008
by Seth Shostak, SETI Institute
A news story from television station KTVU, Oakland (California) that appeared on the internet on January 15 has led some to believe that a credible radio signal from space may have been recently detected - a signal that might be ascribable to extraterrestrial intelligence.
This story, while obviously exciting, is somewhat misleading, and derives from some miscommunication between the reporter and Dan Werthimer, who runs the University of California, Berkeley SETI program.
Dan was describing Berkeley's new instrumentation for detecting very short radio pulses - a signal type that might be used by extraterrestrials to "ping" our world to get attention. He also mentioned the detection of such a pulse, a few months ago (not "last week", as reported in the internet story). That pulse was actually recorded by the Parkes Radio Telescope, in New South Wales, Australia several years ago during a search for pulsars, but only recently looked at by researchers at West Virginia University as they sifted through these old data. Their results were published on September 27 of last year.
The sudden burst of radio energy lasted only 0.005 seconds, and had spectral characteristics that suggested that it was from a distant galaxy, probably billions of light-years from us. Since the burst was seen only once, it is as yet unclear what produced it, although many scientists suspect that it was caused by the collision of two highly dense neutron stars. Radio astronomers are planning a search for more such radio bursters, as they may be a new (and clearly interesting) type of natural phenomenon.
This signal doesn't seem to have anything to do with SETI searches (and wasn't found as part of any such search), although until more "bursters" are found, its true nature will remain mysterious. It is certainly not claimed to be a SETI detection. For such a claim to be made, a signal would have to not only have the characteristics of a deliberate transmission, but would also need to be observed more than once - in order to verify its position on the sky, and to rule out the kind of brutal cosmic event that is probably responsible for the burst reported in September.