CONTACT: 70 VIRGINIS

QUEST

Someone in England just wrote me about an announcement that was made by SETI about receiving radio signals from Virginis70. Does anyone know anything about this and the truth behind it?

from AOL email inquiry

EDITOR'S NOTE: this document changes stance as more infortmation arrives, scroll down to see.

EUREKA

It looks like PLANETS have been discovered at 70 Virginis with SETI tracking behind.

70 Virginis planet is three times as big again. both are about 35 light years from earth. They were discovered by professors Geoffrey Marcy of San Francisco State University and Paul Butler from the University of California, Berkeley; this is only the second time that existence of a planet outside our solar system has been demonstrated.  

Location 70 Virginis: 13:28.4 RA ..+13.47 DEC (courtesy, Don Franck)

Soon after the planets' discovery was announced, SETI (the search for extra terrestrial intelligence) ran a quick check on their records, and discovered a number of anomalous signals coming from the direction of 70 Virginis. While warning that there is only a slight chance that the signals are alien in origin, the team from SETI SERENDIP 3 project has announced that they intend to carry out a new search of the 70 virginis area...

SERENDIP is currently piggybacking on the 1,000-foot dish at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, the largest radio telescope in the world.

 Message broadcast from Earth towards the globular star cluster M13 in 1974 during the dedication of the Arecibo Observatory.

San Francisco State University, Dr. Geoff Marcy and Dr. Paul Butler

Dr. Geoffrey W. Marcy bibliography

The star 70 Virginis has a planet. This recent discovery is the second known case of a planet orbiting a normal star other than our Sun itself. The first case involved 51 Pegasi and was announced last year. The star 70 Vir, shown in the center of the above false-color picture, is very much like the Sun. The planet is not visible above - the unusual structure surrounding the star is caused by the telescope. The planet, designated 70 Vir b for short, was discovered by very slight periodic shifts in its colors.  Defining characteristics of this planet include that it is at least eight times the mass of Jupiter, it's orbit is much smaller than Jupiter's, and it's temperature allows water to exist in liquid form - like on the Earth. Life on Earth is based on liquid water - could  life exist here too?

from APOD (see also EUROPA)

Dr. Tom Van Flandern elaborates by email:

"From measures of radial velocities (taken with a spectrograph), small back-and-forth shifts indicate the presence of a planet. The amplitude of this variation indicates the planet's mass, and the period also tells us the planet's distance, since we know the mass of the parent star from its spectral type. The mass of the star tells us the star's surface temperature, and the distance of the planet then allows us to compute the surface temperature of the planet. These are all routine calculations for every extra-solar planet so far discovered."

from notes from email

70 Virginis B was discovered in January of 1996 by (who else) Goeff Marcy and Paul Butler. It is a very massive planet, roughly 6.4 times the mass of Jupiter. It is .43 AUs from the star 70 Virginis, and has an orbital period of 116.7 days. It's average temperature, while not as hot as Pegasi, is 85 degrees Celsius.

from 70 Virginis B

At a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in January, Drs. Marcy and Butler reported the detection of two more planets orbiting solar-type stars. The stars are 70 Virginis and 47 Ursa Majoris. Both planets are large, roughly six times the mass of Jupiter for the 70 Virginis planet.

from SETI website

Philadelphia Inquirer..San Jose Mercury News

Unfortunately the Astros want a password to access detailed info:

Access Denied

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SETI Institute

2035 Landings Drive Mountain View, CA, 94043, USA

Tel: (415) 961-6633

Fax: (415) 961-7099

OBSERVATIONS AND QUESTIONS

H. Paul Shuch, Ph.D. Executive Director, The SETI League, Inc.

SETI RESPONDS (and more questions from here)

CONVERSATIONS WITH A SETI SCIENTIST

"WE'RE NOT ALONE," SETI HITS

.

EUREKA II

Dr. Bruce Cornet: anomalous signals from earth to space!

Magnetic signals recorded above an underground transmitter in an area where no military base exists, but where UFO sightings have been made by the thousands. . .these signals were quite powerful, highly focussed, polarized, multiband in the magnetic spectrum, and were called polarized magnetic photon beams. . .

EUREKA III

Dr. Stuart Kingsley: the Columbus Optical SETI Observatory

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) in the Optical Spectrum.

EUREKA IV

Major Ed Dames: founder of PSI TECH announced on Art Bell, August 5, 1997, 1:00 AM,  PST, the development of PROJECT STARMAN, consisting of a "laser signal beacon" piggybacked aboard a "Polynesian-based" telescope to contact beings on a planet,  perhaps within our solar system.  

KEY URLS

.....ADDRESS..........................................................................................DESCRIPTION

http://www.seti.org/lowgfx/phoenix/gbstarspre.html

Project Phoenix at Green Bank

http://www.seti.org/lowgfx/phoenix/starspre.html

Project Phoenix in Australia

http://www.seti-inst.edu/lowgfx/searches/hrms-star-pre.html

Targetted Search System that NASA used

http://www.seti.org/lowgfx/phoenix/target-selection.html

Project Phoenix target selection:

http://www.seti-inst.edu/lowgfx/searches/searches-list.html

SETI searches performed to date

http://bigscience.com/setiathome.html

Do your own SETI analysis

http://www.mufor.org/zeta2ret.html

A planet found around Zeta2 Reticuli

http://www.setileague.org/general/whatsurv.htm

SETI strategies

http://sag-www.ssl.berkeley.edu/serendip

Overview of SERENDIP's mission

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap960130.html

NASA repeat looks at prior targets

http://cannon.sfsu.edu/~williams/planetsearch/planetsearch.html

Complete description of the techniques

http://www.setileague.org/

SETI League's web site

http://www.setiquest.com/

SETIQuest, The Magazine of SETI

http://www.bigear.org/

WOW signal

http://www.bigear.org/

"Big Ear" Radio Observatory

http://www.setileague.org/photos/hits.htm

SETI "hits" so far

http://www.OrionWorks.com/bcornet/

TLP Transient Luminescent Phenomenon

NOTES FROM EMAIL AHA, CONTROVERSY, DOUBT

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