By 
December 26th, 2020
Credit: Breakthrough Listen
About those mysterious radio signals that appear to have come from Proxima Centauri – the closest star system to us, just a scant 4.2 light-years away. It’s known to be accompanied by at least two planets.
Artist’s impression of Proxima Centauri b shown hypothetically as an arid rocky super-earth.
Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
The Breakthrough Listen Project has been examining the emission since its detection. They even dubbed it BLC1 for “Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1.”
Breakthrough Listen is a $100 million program of astronomical observations and analysis, the most comprehensive ever undertaken in search of evidence of technological civilizations in the Universe.
S. Pete Worden, Executive Director of the Breakthrough Initiatives.
Credit: S. Pete Worden
Tracking down the source
Pete Worden, Executive Director of the Breakthrough Initiatives, has stated that team members have detected several unusual signals and they are carefully investigating. “These signals are likely interference that we cannot fully explain. Further analysis is currently being undertaken,” he explains.
Worden adds in a related tweet: “No one is claiming it’s a techno signature. We are in the process of following the agreed protocols. At this point we have some interesting signals we believe are interference but as of yet have not been able to track down the source.”
As a senior member of the IAA SETI working group, Worden told Inside Outer Space, “we are following the only protocols that exist internationally.” The International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) formally established a committee for SETI science as far back as the early 1970s.
“Since this is far from a confirmed detection there really isn’t much to do other than submit the scientific paper with the data,” Worden said. “We will do that in early January.”
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is an international, collaborative affair. SETI scientist Dan Werthimer of the University of California, Berkeley. He is shown here at China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) with other FAST SETI collaborators. Credit: Dan Werthimer
Signal to media noise
Given the signal to media noise, I touched base with Dan Werthimer in the Astronomy Department and Space Sciences Lab at the University of California, Berkeley.
Werthimer is an expert in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), and a co-founder and chief scientist of the SETI@home project. Also, he’s director of the Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations (SERENDIP), as well as principal investigator for the Collaboration for Astronomy Signal Processing and Electronics Research (CASPER) project.
Bottom line: Werthimer knows his SETI stuff and he offered some messages about the Proxima Centauri signal circumstances.
Parkes radio telescope is an icon of Australian science, and one part of the Australia Telescope National Facility.
Credit: Parkes Radio Telescope/Australia Telescope National Facility
Lunch hour
“I don’t know details about this candidate signal, but in general,” Werthimer told Inside Outer Space, “we’ve seen these types of signal before, and it has always turned out to be RFI, radio frequency interference.”
This particular candidate, Werthimer added, is almost certainly RFI transmissions from human technology, not ET made. “The Parkes observatory, where this candidate was found, has a lot of radio interference,” Werthimer notes.
Astronomers observing at Parkes in Australia announced a big discovery a few years ago they thought was a new astrophysical or atmospheric phenomena, Werthimer recalled. “The discovery was exciting for almost a year,” he explained, “until somebody noticed the signals only appeared at the lunch hour.”
Get the drift?
It turned out the signals came from a microwave oven that stayed on for a bit after the door was opened. “If you open the oven door early, before the timer runs out, microwaves come out for a bit while the power turns off and creates a chirping signal, which many thought was coming from the sky,” Werthimer said.
Werthimer also added that he thinks the signal was seen at 982.002 megahertz. MHz is used to measure the transmission speed of electronic devices. In this case, it is very likely coming from a 982.000 MHz human-made oscillator that has drifted a bit. Inexpensive oscillators drift by several parts per million, he said.
Artist’s conception of the surface of Proxima Centauri b. The Alpha Centauri binary system can be seen in the background, to the upper right of Proxima.
Credit:ESO/M. Kornmesser
“ET won’t know about seconds and MHz – these are arbitrary human invented units,” Werthimer concludes.
Resources
Meanwhile, check out “Alien Hunters Discover Mysterious Signal from Proxima Centauri” in Scientific American by Jonathan O’Callaghan and Lee Billings at:
Also, take a read of “A Very Interesting Radio Signal was Just Detected Coming from Proxima Centauri” by Matthew Cimone in Universe Today at:
Lastly, take a view of the situation by senior astronomer Franck Marchis at the SETI Institute discussing the “Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1” signal which was revealed in the UK’s Guardian on December 18, 2020.
Go to video at:
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