SETI public: No signal from an ETI - a reporter misinterpreted the facts

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From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Wed Jan 16 2008 - 16:11:04 PST

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    >From the Bad Astronomer's blog:

    http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/01/16/no-alien-signal/

    No alien signal

    Posted at 3:01 pm in Astronomy, Debunking, Science, Skepticism

    OK folks, nothing to see here.

    I talked with my buddy Seth Shostak, who is a Senior SETI astronomer, and he
    told me that this whole alien signal thing is a big misunderstanding on the
    part of the KTVU reporter.

    Basically, Dan Wertheimer, a radio astronomer who is affiliated with SETI,
    detected a pulse from space. The source is certainly extragalactic, and is
    most likely some sort of natural event. It’s unclear exactly what kind of
    event, but there is a long list of things it could be. Aliens phoning us is
    pretty far down that list. But since Dan does do some SETI work, the
    reporter just botched things up a bit and misattributed the source. The news
    article reads oddly, like he took a mishmash of topics and wrote them all up
    into one article, so this misunderstanding doesn’t surprise me much.

    The signal was detected quite some time ago, and had it been alien, believe
    me you would have heard from the folks at SETI!

    So chalk this one up as yet another in a long line of false alarms. Sorry to
    burst the ET bubble.

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