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I have given a lot of thought to the
‘who/when/where’ of announcing an actual verified signal. I
know that there is a standard protocol in place to be used
*when* it happens but I also know human nature enough to
know that it will all be tossed overboard at the first sign
of an actual signal. This is what I will do:
First – I will tell no one for a very long time. I will use
that time to make as many attempts at falsification as I can
think of all the while recording every bit of data that I
receive and all the actions I take. My SETI File Manager
software automatically takes care of recording those actions
for the most part and the Spectrum Analyzer automatically
records the data. I will keep on doing this until I run out
of ideas for falsification then I will wait some more and
keep on recording. Then I will wait some more (you get the
idea).
Second – I will contact the few people that I know in the SETI
community that trust me enough to take me seriously (only
three or four people). I will do that by phone but will
record both sides of the conversation surreptitiously. I
will ask for help validating the signal with any systems
they know of that could cover the same part of the spectrum
that I use. I will wait for their answer which will take a
long time because they would have to check with the owners
of those systems and make their own explanations to them.
This will almost certainly end the process as far as they
are concerned because the owners of those systems (UC
Berkeley, Harvard etc.) would never change their operating
schedules to validate a signal that I pointed out. I will
place those recordings with a lawyer with instructions to
put them in a blind (unknown to me) safe deposit box and
keep it closed until an unconnected second source validates
my discovery.
Third - I will capture all the schematics, descriptions, and
software source code from my station and have them placed in
that same safe deposit box. Then I will move a copy of the
data collected to that box. This makes up a baseline for the
parameters of my station.
Fourth
– I would make an announcement on all the on-line boards and
then follow the standard protocol. Then I will continue on
my way listening and recording the signal for as long as it
is available. I would be available to answer any questions
that came my way as honestly as possible hiding nothing
reveling everything. I won’t attempt to write a scholarly
paper because it would never be published nor would I write
anything for the general media unless by invitation and then
for a fee.
I fully expect that to be the end of it. No one will follow
up because they cannot or will not. I will have to rely on
the fact that I published the information and that I have
the original data all locked up safe and sound where even I
don’t have access to it and can’t be accused of ‘doctoring’
it.
Some day the signal would be seen again by one of the large
institutions and I can start the process of proving that I
was first.
I will not make a dime from it but will die happy.
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After looking at the software and hardware
requirements for my Project Argus station, and mulling over
such technical questions as integration time constant and Doppler
shift correction, I have come to the following epiphany:
I must look for the most obvious signal - and that is
the signal that I would choose to send myself, if I had the money to
do so. What that means (and it seems obvious once put on paper) is
that:
I must look for myself
Any ETI that I might hope to detect must be more like
myself than unlike me, in most basic ways. Not to put too fine
a point on it, but, for example, I think this ET would think in the
same time frame as we do. Not at the speed of a glacier or at
the speed of bullet, but somewhere near our 'thinking speed'. This
is necessary to make the signal recognizable to us when finally
detected.
ET's physical makeup would have to be about the same
as ours. Not as small as a bacterium or as large as one of the
rolling hills I can see from my window, but somewhere in-between.
This would give him the same type of control over his environment,
and the same capability as I have to construct the needed
transmitter, which could produce a signal which I can recognize. Not
all ETI need be like me; only those who I have a realistic chance of
detecting.
ETI's transmitter must be an RF signal generator.
Some other, more exotic form of communication may well be in use,
but since I can't construct a receiver to detect exotica, it's not
worth considering. This leaves open optical SETI - but not for
me. I know nothing about the optics required on that scale. As
a microwaver, I'll stick to the area where I have a shot at SETI
success.
The signal must be a deliberate beacon. That's
the only type I and most other Argus stations would have a ghost of
a chance of hearing. Leakage detection seems less likely, if
only because of the transmit power requirements needed to show up on
my system. Detecting planetary Radar also seems unlikely,
because it seems that it would only be sent for short periods.
Once a radar echo was recovered, the transmitter would most likely
be turned off or pointed somewhere else. The modulation scheme
needed for an effective Planetary Radar might also make it difficult
to recognize on this end.
I would set my beacon up in the waterhole to maximize
its chances of discovery. I would want to be heard, and that
is the most obvious place to start. The hydrogen line is at
1420 MHz and the hydroxyl line at 1662 MHZ. I would transmit at
exactly 1/2 way between the two at 1541 MHz. (One could also
make a case for the geometric mean of the hydrogen and hydroxyl
lines, which is 1536 MHz. But we're splitting hairs here.)
I would expect ETI to similarly transmit somewhere near the middle
of the waterhole, if he wants me to detect him. Unfortunately,
my Project Argus system (receiver and filter) can't tune this
frequency, but if I were to make changes to my system, that is where
I would choose to monitor.
An ideal interstellar beacon should be narrow band to
concentrate the transmit power, and to make it distinguishable from
natural sources. It must be directed at our star. This
is necessary to conserve power, and to make possible reception over
huge distances. So a directed beacon is what I am looking for.
I can see ETI pointing such a beacon at each candidate star, one at
a time, sending the beacon for some length of time, and then moving
to the next star.
The above targeted beacon strategy implies that earth
rotation Doppler compensation is a minimum requirement of our
Project Argus receiving stations, if only to exclude local signals.
Correcting for the Doppler shift due to our travel around the sun is
also a requirement. I have the earth rotation Doppler chirp
running now - the other compensation is an unknown quantity to me at
this point, but something which Project Argus participants should be
working on.
My hypothetical interstellar beacon would be locked
onto each star for about a year at a time. We may have missed
ETI's signal already, and may have to wait another 300 Billion years
for it to show up again. Or, it may be starting tomorrow.
Since we just don't know, we may as well assume that it starts
tomorrow.
If I were sending a beacon, its transmitter frequency
would be Doppler-adjusted to the Galactic center of rest.
Since the purpose of a beacon is to be seen against a background of
other signals, this would make it clear to anyone receiving it that
it was an intentional signal. Again, I have no idea how to
design this correction into my receiver chirp. If it's small
(less than about 0.01 Hz/sec), no matter where I point my antenna I
can't use it anyway, because my 10Hz/Bin resolution and planned
30-minute integration time constant make such small Doppler rates
moot. If the compensation for the Galactic center of rest is a
sizeable fraction of a Hz per second, I'd better figure out how to
implement it!
My beacon would be a CW signal on/off modulated in a
regular way. I might send morse code in a repetitive
pattern, and I would send it at a speed slow enough to allow
integration of each character, but not so slow as to allow the
signal to drift across many bins during a given key-down period.
If I concentrate on looking for myself, I may well
miss signals sent by those not like me. But I know that
creatures who think like me exist (if only by Earth's own example.)
Designing our search around those not like us involves pure
speculation, and may reduce our chances for SETI success.
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