Dear Friends,
Be Well.
David
The story of the SETI
discussions during the discovery of pulsars has never been fully told—until now
One of the most
significant events for human kind will be the detection of intelligent life
elsewhere in the universe. This kind of ‘contact’ is bound to have a profound
impact on human culture, society and technology.
The question of how
to handle such an event has been widely discussed. Indeed, the international
community agreed on a ‘Detection Protocol’ in 1990 that sets out the steps that
a research group should take in the event of a contact.
Today, Alan Penny at
the University of St Andrews in Scotland tells the story of a real life
incident in which the possibility of contact with an intelligent civilisation
was seriously considered. Penny draws together various first hand recollections
of the event to show how researchers handled the possibility.
The event in question
is the 1967 discovery of pulsars, which we now know are rotating neutron stars
that produce regular radio pulses. The team that made the discovery was led by
Anthony Hewish, who later won a Nobel prize for the work, and famously included
Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who did not win the prize.
At the time, the dawn
of radio astronomy, the discovery of a source of regular pulses in space was a
huge surprise. “We had to face the possibility that the signals were, indeed,
generated on a planet circling some distant star, and that they were artificial,”
said Hewish later.
The timeline behind
the discovery stretches over 6 months or so. In August 1967, Bell noticed
regular signals at the same sidereal time each day. Almost immediately, the
team considered the possibility that the signals were generated by Little Green
Men or LGM as they called it.
In December, the team
confirmed the discovery using another telescope and Bell pinpointed the exact
position of the source in the sky.
Soon afterwards, she
found a second source of signals and by mid-January, a third and fourth source.
By this time, the team discounted the possibility that an artificial source
could be responsible and eventually settled on neutron stars as the
explanation.
In February, the
paper announcing the discovery was accepted and published in Nature following a
public announcement on 24 February 1968.
Penny says that
what’s interesting about this process is that during the discovery process, the
team discussed the implications should the signal turn out to be an artificial
source, how to verify such a conclusion and how to announce it. They also
discussed whether such a discovery might be dangerous.
This process closely
follows the Detection Protocol agreed by the international community in 1990.
There’s an
interesting corollary to this. The team also discussed the possibility that if
it were an artificial source, somebody would want to reply.
Penny points out that
the international community has yet to agree on a Reply Protocol because there
are widely differing views on whether such a course of action would be
beneficial or dangerous for humanity.
This is a situation
that needs to be rectified. “The 1967 episode indicates how difficult it would
be to construct a policy in the fervid atmosphere of a ‘Contact’,” says Penny.
With SETI searches
now focusing on habitable exoplants around other stars, it seems prudent to
come to some agreement sooner rather than later.
Ref:
arxiv.org/abs/1302.0641: The SETI Episode in the 1967 Discovery of Pulsars
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