Project META: What have we found?
Abstract
A progress report on META (Megachannel Extraterrestrial Assay) is provided. For eight years, META has been monitoring the northern sky for Doppler-adjusted radio signals at 21 cm wavelength, and it's 'second harmonic' 10.5 cm, based on radio emission from neutral hydrogen, and surmised to be a likely transmission mode of extraterrestrial civilizations. Approximately one million strong signals have been recorded, which have been narrowed down by various criteria, particularly duration of 'event', to 74 candidate events. A complementary program, META II at the Argentine Institute of Radio Astronomy, has been monitoring the southern sky since 1990. Of the 74 candidate events, 37 have been unable to be explained by conventional means. However none has ever repeated, so the results are considerable negative. A new program, BETA (Billion-channel ExtraTerrestrial Assay) is described that is a joint venture of the Planetary Society, NASA, and the Bosack/Kruger Foundation. It is expected to be running within a year.
- Publication:
-
Planetary Report
- Pub Date:
- October 1993
- Bibcode:
- 1993PlR....13e...4H
- Keywords:
-
- Extraterrestrial Intelligence;
- Extraterrestrial Life;
- Project Seti;
- Radio Astronomy;
- Radio Signals;
- Doppler Effect;
- Radio Telescopes;
- Signal Analyzers;
- Signal Detectors;
- Space Sciences (General)