SATURN AND ITS MOONS AS A SETI CANDIDATE?
by Jason W. Higley
As a result of the SETI Project known as META I, researchers Paul Horowitz and Carl Sagan wrote a scientific paper based on the five-year search for narrow-band radio signals near the radio frequency of the 1420 MHz spin/flip line of neutral hydrogen, and its second harmonic frequency, 2480 MHz, and after eliminating billions of signals, they found 37 candidate events, none of which has been re-detected upon subsequent follow-up re-observation. [The results of this search were published in a paper called "Five Years of Project META, an all-sky narrow-band radio search for extraterrestrials." on Sept. 1993 in the Astrophysical Journal, Part I, (ISSN 0004-637x), vol. 415, no.1, p. 218-235.]
If one enters the data (List of Locations of Potential Extraterrestrial Transmitters) from that paper such as the coordinates at Right Ascension (RA) and the Declination (DEC), the correct dates and times and you convert the Julian dates, and enter them all into any popular astronomy program (I used Distant Suns 4 and several other popular astronomy programs) looking back at the sky during that epoch of observation you will see that your astronomy program will probably put Saturn and her moons within approximately 0.25 degrees to 1 degree of the candidate signal at 2840 MHz on February 8, 1989. (Harvard's radio-telescope's stated beamwidth is 0.25 degrees at 2840 Mhz.) Also interestingly (aside from Saturn's other moons) Voyager II was close to 1 deg. of the radio-telescope's beam and Neptune was possibly within less than 2 deg. of the February 8, 1989 event.
Somewhat less convincingly, in a separate event (out of the 37 candidate events), a little more than two months earlier on November 27, 1988 Neptune and Voyager were within ~2 deg. of the radio-telescope's 0.25 deg. beam.
META I published the positions of 37 candidates, after eliminating billions; 2 of these candidate events may have had solar system objects potentially within the beam of the radio-telescope. Over a five year span and billions of eliminated signals, it would seem incredibly coincidental that large solar system objects or a man-made deep space object (Voyager II) would appear close, if not within, the beam of the scope for 2 of the 37 candidate events.
Since the META I paper's release, amateurs and professionals alike have conducted follow-up observations of META I candidates at their reported RA and DEC's. Upon further investigation, I have determined that VERY FEW amateurs have a receiver capable of receiving 2840 MHz, and that the majority, if not all, have only looked at the candidate RA and DEC positions at the 1420 MHz frequency (and not at Saturn and the other objects). Also, in 1997 Project Phoenix of the SETI Institute, using a large radio-telescope began following up on the META I candidate positions, which are fixed in the sky in RA and DEC. It seems unlikely that any of the above researchers would have found anything if these signals actually emanated from or near solar system objects, since these objects have moved almost immediately after the initial observation (i.e. the planets and Voyager II don't stay fixed in RA and DEC, they have moved on; the researchers have only looked at the background stars on follow-ups!)
Coincidently, NASA was beaming telemetry to Voyager II in during this time frame in the direction of the reported candidate signals. Voyager II made a rendezvous with Neptune in August of 1989 (only months after the candidate events) from Earth's perspective, visually they were in the same region of sky. As best as I have been able to determine, Voyager's High Gain antenna's closest data transmission frequency for direct transmission was 2300 MHz, a full 540 MHz away from the candidate signal. Also the signal of the candidate was very powerful; much stronger than would have been received from Voyager II!
I have not been able to determine if any radar transmissions were sent from Earth to determine the range of Voyager II to Neptune, but NASA has done this for other rendezvous. It has been suggested that these candidates probably could not have been caused by Earth-sent, planet-reflected radar beams, because the signal returning to Earth would be too weak to match the power received in the candidates signals.
Playing the devil's advocate, there were several thousand stars behind each candidate event and even a handful of asteroids were in beam or closeby, so these signals could have emanated from near those, could have been some unknown natural phenomena or they could have been human-made RFI (although there was a rigorous rejection mechanism based on doppler smearing that would have probably caused all local RFI to be rejected.)
It is my hypothesis that there is an incredibly small chance that 2 of the candidate signals from the META project might have been generated by an automated ETI probe that may have been in the region of the above-mentioned planets or moons and might have been responding/reacting to transmissions beamed toward Voyager II.
With NASA's Cassini spacecraft on it's way to Saturn, this series of hypothetical events may be repeated.
UPDATE! - BOTH SETI@Home AND META HAVE A CANDIDATE SIGNAL WITHIN 0.5 DEGREES OF SATURN!
In a nutshell, it appears as if both the SETI@home and META projects have a candidate in their top candidates list that was detected at approx. 0.5 degrees from Saturn. Many of you have probably seen my threads regarding my Saturn/Iapetus speculation. I recently e-mailed every SETI scientist I could think of regarding the same. Also, you might remember my recent thread about the top 14 gaussian candidates listed in SETI@home newsletter #13 and my guesses about their RA/DEC's at:
http://www.oocities.org/exosearch/top14seticandidates.html
wherein I speculated (a shot in the dark) that one of the SETI@home candidates was interestingly close to where Saturn was on a specific date.
WELL, interestingly, one of the above has sent me the dates (which I cannot re-print here without his permission) of the candidate from the SETI@home triple gaussian candidates for the RA/DEC in question (although they did not comment on my derivation of the RA 3h42m, DEC 18.1, even though I specifically mentioned it to them) and if I've gotten the coordinates correct, the candidate was within just over 0.5 degrees of Saturn (but not Iapetus) for one of the events. That would be quite a similar separation from Saturn as the META candidate of Feb. 7, 1989, which had a distance from Saturn of 0.45 degrees. Since SETI@home's Arecibo beamwidth is 0.1 degrees (at least that's what I saw on their site), this would hypothetically encompass the META candidate, at least as far as the apparent degree separation from Saturn.
OBVIOUSLY, THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT AN ETI PROBE HAS BEEN DETECTED AT SATURN, (but I wish I had something to point at Saturn!)
Playing the devils advocate:
Don't forget about Earth RFI and all the regular suspects (including human error on my part);
Why would an object maintain the same distance in apparent separation from Saturn WITH RESPECT TO EARTH? (Talk about your Geo-stationary orbit :-) A natural body orbiting Saturn would vary degree of separation by more than that over time (maybe it's a coincidence that we happened to look at a previously unseen natural object when it's at similar orbital separations? What kind of object, I don't know, maybe something like a metallic asteroid, which somehow focuses or causes radio-noise-storms similar to Jupiter's radio-storm-causing moon IO, What other kind of natural phenomena could do that? Maybe some kind of radiation belt? Could we be seeing some kind of Van Allen like phenomena that emanates (bizarre, previously unknown) narrow-band radio transmissions at approx 0.5 degrees from Saturn? Cometary-ice-fragment-particulate-water-maser excited by Saturn? I know it's all grasping at straws (sorry in advance to those who hate speculation), but that was some chain of coindences, no?
0.5 degrees of Saturn, twice; and one of them with a nice gaussian curve. hmmmm!
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Update # 2
Regarding Saturn/Iapetus Voyager II coordinates in relation to a META Candidate -
Well, I've re-checked out the coordinates on several ephemeris generators (including JPL's Horizons for Voyager II, and NASA's Saturn Ephemeris Generator ver. 2.1) and plotted the coordinates into several astronomy programs to get the following best-guesses: This is only for the 1 META candidate on Julian Date 2447565 (Feb.7,1989) at 14:17 UT.
The Candidate Signal was within approximately 0.25 degrees of Iapetus (Saturn's Moon);
The Candidate Signal was within approximately 0.45 degrees of Saturn;
The Candidate Signal was within approx. 0.9 degrees of Voyager II;
Voyager II was separated from Saturn by approx. 0.6;
Soooo, if the Ephemeris generators are accurate, I could only get Voyager II within 0.9 degrees (and NOT 0.1) of the Candidate Signal.
Voyager II's 3.7 Meter High Gain Antenna beamwidth was 2.2 degrees at S Band (and 0.6 degrees at X Band, and the transmission cone back toward Earth would have encompassed Saturn and Iapetus.
So, here's a possible scenario, Voyager II sends data to Earth, probe at Saturn/Iapetus intercepts (and knows that we are now a spacefaring civilization, possibly a trigger for communicating?), determines direction of transmission and sends its own to Earth.
If you have any questions, or you know of why this hypothesis is faulted or incorrect, please contact me right away, I'm Jason H. at exosearch@yahoo.com
Thanks for visiting!