Radio Pulsars may be Artificial Beacons

Paper presented at the 195th meeting of the American Astronomical Society

Wednesday, January 12, 2000, Session 33, Atlanta, Georgia

Speaker: Paul LaViolette, Ph.D.
The Starburst Foundation
email: gravitics1@aol.com

Evidence that radio pulsars may be artificial beacons of ETI origin

Abstract: This paper presents evidence indicating that pulsar sky positions are nonrandomly distributed in a pattern that is not easily attributed to natural causes. As one example, between l ~ 32° to l ~ 57°, the number of pulsars progressively rises with increasing longitude until at the northern one-radian longitude point (l = 57.24°) their concentration drops precipitously by almost three fold, as if to mark this location. Compared with lower galactic longitudes, much of the higher pulsar population at these longitudes may be from observational bias due to the greater sensitivity of the Arecibo telescope, which has surveyed l ~ 39° to l ~ 69°. However, the progressive rise from l ~ 39° to l ~ 57° and abrupt drop off at this one-radian longitude cannot be attributed to such selection effects since it occurs at longitudes that lie well within the region covered by the Arecibo survey. On the other hand, if pulsars are ETI communication beacons, an obvious choice as a topic for communication would be to indicate the termination point of a one radian arc deviation from the Galactic center since such a geometrically unique off-center viewer-dependent location is not preferred by any natural process. Moreover designating this longitude indicates to us that the senders know the sky location of the Galactic center as seen from our vantage point, and hence that they intend their beamed message specifically for our particular Galactic locale.

Other nonrandom pulsar positions, further emphasize the northern one-radian longitude point. For example, this pulsar clump termination point is marked by the Millisecond Pulsar (B1937+21), the most rapid of all known pulsars and also one of only two pulsars known to emit giant pulses as well as optical pulses. This unique pulsar is the closest of all pulsars to this one-radian benchmark, deviating by just 0.27°. In addition, the tip of this clump is also marked by another equally unique millisecond pulsar (B1957+20), which is the second most rapid pulsar in the sky and is distinguished as being one of just 6 eclipsing binary millisecond pulsars. This second pulsar is unusual in that its period is just 3.18 percent longer than that of the Millisecond pulsar, approximating the percentage amount that the sky position longitude of B1957+20 (l = 59.2°) surpasses the longitude of the one radian point (l = 57.24°). This and other nonrandom pulsar position relations, suggest that pulsars comprise a vast network of ETI beacons that extends throughout the Galaxy and is beaming signals in our particular direction.1
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1) LaViolette, Paul, The Talk of the Galaxy (Alexandria, VA: Starlane Publications, 4/2000).

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