I would like people’s opinion as to who should get the credit for having introduced the idea that pulsed, broadband ETI beacons might be useful for interstellar communication or alternatively likely being used in interstellar communication.<\/p>\n
Let me first review my own contribution in this area. \u00a0In 1979, I came to realize that pulsars may actually be artificially engineered beacons and not natural objects as conventionally believed. \u00a0I had hypothesized that alien civilizations may have engineered the cosmic ray flux from neutron stars to produce precise pulsed signals\u00a0as a kind of Galactic GPS system to aid interstellar navigation. \u00a0Also I hypothesized that certain of these beacons were conveying an ETI communication message intended specifically for us.<\/p>\n
So I was proposing that alien civilizations may actually be transmitting pulsed, broadband signals covering the entire radio spectrum and in some cases extending up to optical X-ray, and gamma ray wavelengths and\u00a0that these signals were being emitted as narrow beams some of which were targeted to our particular stellar environs. \u00a0I had proposed that SETI searches should begin looking for this type of signal as opposed to the discrete frequency type of radio transmission that they have been seeking for decades without success.<\/p>\n
At the time I had first come up with this idea, \u00a0 I also designed a device which we could build to send return messages in the form of pulsed, broadband, targeted beams that would resemble a pulsar’s signal.<\/p>\n
After researching this for 21 years, \u00a0I made a public presentation of the idea at the January 2000\u00a0meeting of the\u00a0American Astronomical Society.\u00a0 The abstract of my talk, which was published in the AAS proceedings, is posted at: \u00a0http:\/\/www.etheric.com\/LaViolette\/abstract.html<\/a>.\u00a0 Also that same year I published a book entitled The Talk of the Galaxy, which described these ideas in some detail which was made available at the meeting.\u00a0 This book was later updated and reprinted in 2006 by Bear & Co. under the title Decoding the Message of the Pulsars<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0For many years Amazon.com has made parts of this book available for free public perusal, particularly the parts about how we might construct a pulsed broadband directed beam communicator and the introduction to the idea that pulsars might be extraterrestrial beacons: In addition Gerry Zeitlin published a paper in the 2002 issue of the refereed journal\u00a0New Frontiers of Science\u00a0that called attention to my ideas on this subject and called upon the scientific community to begin an active investigation of the pulsar phenomenon that adopted this new perspective. \u00a0 At that time, this was one of the few journals\u00a0that dealt with the topic of extraterrestrial communication. \u00a0Zeitlin also published information about these ideas on his Open SETI website (http:\/\/www.openseti.org\/OSPulsars.html<\/a>).<\/p>\n In 2000, when I first went public with the idea, the Starburst Foundation circulated the following press release:http:\/\/www.starburstfound.org\/PR\/talk.html<\/a>. \u00a0This generated some limited press attention, which included a brief mention in the October 2000 issue of\u00a0Popular Mechanics\u00a0magazine. \u00a0Also several popular journals such asAtlantis Rising and\u00a0UFO, wrote articles about the discovery. \u00a0In addition,\u00a0numerous a number of periodicals published reviews of my book.<\/p>\n The ideas have been discussed by lecturers at various conferences, including a course taught at the Monroe Institute. \u00a0I have spoken about these findings on a number of radio talk shows including the very popular Coast to Coast AM show. \u00a0The ideas have received rather extensive discussion on internet websites.<\/p>\n The idea of using pulsed, broad band, directed beam beacons for ETI communication has recently caught on and generated a lot of press interest. \u00a0But these news stories made no mention of my work which has been around for the past 10 years. \u00a0They gave the credit to Gregory, James, and Dominic Benford, who had published two papers on this idea\u00a0in the June issue of\u00a0Astrobiology(http:\/\/www.liebertonline.com\/toc\/ast\/10\/5<\/a>).<\/p>\n Unfortunately, my prior work on this idea was not cited in their papers. \u00a0Why? \u00a0Was it because they had not properly researched the history of the idea they were presenting? \u00a0At present I don’t know. \u00a0One of the authors, Gregory Benford, is a professor at the University of California, which is known to have very good success in having their press releases covered in the news. \u00a0So if neither the press releases nor the Benford papers mentioned my prior work, it is not surprising that these news sources would credit the Benfords with the idea. \u00a0And so we find the news media now referring to these types of ET communicators as “Benford Beacons.” \u00a0See for example:\u00a0Physics.org<\/a>, \u00a0Time magazine<\/a>, \u00a0Science Daily<\/a>, \u00a0Astronomy Now<\/a>, or \u00a0Florida Today newspaper<\/a>.<\/p>\n Also in one of their two papers (Searching for Cost Optimized Interstellar Beacons), the Benfords had mentioned about the intermittent pulsar source GCRT J17445-3009 choosing it as a possible candidate for a broad-band pulsed beacon of the sort they were proposing. \u00a0Several news media carried stories about this, such as\u00a0Astronomy Now<\/a>. \u00a0However, \u00a0four years earlier this very same pulsar was discussed\u00a0in my book\u00a0Decoding the Message of the Pulsars(p. 92). \u00a0There I pointed out not only that this may be a pulsed broadband directed beam source of artifical origin, but also that this could be part of an ET message being sent to us. \u00a0I spent several chapters of my book explaining why several pulsars may together be communicating a warning message about the past occurrence of major explosion of our Galaxy’s core, and explained that this particular pulsar may also be part of this message. \u00a0But no mention was made of this neither in the Benfords’ paper nor in the\u00a0Astronomy Now\u00a0news report. \u00a0Neither do their papers mention about the possibility of a galactic core explosion message being conveyed by pulsars.<\/p>\n So, I am interested to hear what you think about all of this.<\/p>\n Paul A. LaViolette, Ph.D.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I would like people’s opinion as to who should get the credit for having introduced the idea that pulsed, broadband ETI beacons might be useful for interstellar communication or alternatively likely being used in interstellar communication. Let me first review my own contribution in this area. \u00a0In 1979, I came \u2026 Continue reading
\nhttp:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Decoding-Message-Pulsars-Intelligent-Communication\/dp\/1591430623\/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1285741706&sr=1-1<\/a>.<\/p>\n