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Space & Planetary Science

Kepler Finds Two Candidate SETI Signals – Or Not?

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
January 6, 2012
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First Look at Kepler SETI Candidate Signals
“The signals below are undoubtedly examples of terrestrial radio frequency interference (RFI). … These signals look similar to what we think might be produced from an extraterrestrial technology. They are narrow in frequency, much narrower than would be produced by any known astrophysical phenomena, and they drift in frequency with time, as we would expect because of the doppler effect imposed by the relative motion of the transmitter and the receiving radio telescope.”
Keith’s note: Wow – looks like NASA can fund and support SETI again. This is great news! For decades NASA has been afraid to fund anything that even hints at SETI due to a supposed Congressional prohibition on funding SETI with NASA funds. Yet no one has ever managed to produce the public law or actual legally binding Congressional document that actually states that such a prohibition does indeed exist. I never understood the logic in this SETI ban – especially when you note that many of the highest grossing films of all time (i.e. things that voters/taxpayers willingly pay to see) deal with SETI, Astrobiology, and life on other worlds.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

5 responses to “Kepler Finds Two Candidate SETI Signals – Or Not?”

  1. Bill_McKinnon says:
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    I don’t believe this is NASA work per se; it’s “piggy-back” SETI processing Green Bank Radiotelescope data. As to Congressional restrictions, deleting SETI funds from appropriations is not the same as “outlawing” SETI work, but it does force SETI practitioners to be creative in hunting for support & help.

  2. Geoffrey Landis says:
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    There’s a discussion from the NASA history office of the cancellation of the NASA SETI program (which happened twenty years ago) here:

    http://history.nasa.gov/gar

  3. sowr says:
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    WOW – pun intended? These are very pessimistic times, and I’m not going to point any fingers, but greed comes into the equation, as always. In fact pessimism even pervades this website, which is unfortunate.

    How optimistic is it then to point a camera at a distant star, review the data for “Earthlike” planets, then turn a huge radio telescope to that part of the heavens and listen for other civilizations?

    It’s truly wonderful.

  4. Steve Whitfield says:
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    Over the long term, both government support for SETI and non-government interest in SETI seems to go through high/low cycles.  But the cat keeps coming back.  It wouldn’t surprise me if the SETI story goes the same route as some of the other sciences did:

    1) Excitement in a new science;
    2) fading funding;
    3) fading interest;
    4) increasing criticism about the money being spent;
    5) something marvelous is found and everyone comes back out of the closet.
     
    We can hope that it’s just a matter of time before SETI reveals the answers to some of the basic big questions.  The only thing that’s certain is, if we don’t look, we won’t find any answers.
     
    Steve

  5. Saturn1300 says:
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    Update: Friday, January 6, 2012 After posting the plots below on January 5, it became clear that we had not stated as definitively and absolutely as possible that these signals are interference. We have update the post to make this clear. Sorry for any confusion.
     No candidate SETI signals.All the candidate signals,they have concluded, are interference.They have a lot of checking to go,however,on other signals.There is hope yet.