From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Tue Mar 29 2005 - 04:35:13 PST
Paper: astro-ph/0503580
Date: Sun, 27 Mar 2005 17:30:43 GMT (155kb)
Title: Transit Lightcurve Signatures of Artificial Objects
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.6
: Tue Mar 29 2005 - 04:43:59 PST
Authors: Luc Arnold
Comments: Accepted for publication in ApJ. Manuscript: 17 pages, 8 figures
\\
The forthcoming space missions, able to detect Earth-like planets by the
transit method, will a fortiori also be able to detect the transit of
artificial planet-size objects. Multiple artificial objects would produce
lightcurves easily distinguishable from natural transits. If only one
artificial object transits, detecting its artificial nature becomes more
difficult. We discuss the case of three different objects (triangle, 2-screen,
louver-like 6-screen) and show that they have a transit lightcurve
distinguishable from the transit of natural planets, either spherical or
oblate, although an ambiguity with the transit of a ringed planet exists in
some cases. We show that transits, especially in the case of multiple
artificial objects, could be used for the emission of attention-getting
signals, with a sky coverage comparable to the laser pulse method. The large
number of expected planets (several hundreds) to be discovered by the transit
method by next space missions will allow to test these ideas.
\\ ( http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0503580