TYC 1220-91-1 makes the WOW! signal look like the meh signal. It seems to be on a frequency of 1420 MHz * pi and to be coming from a solar twin older than the sun. It was 300 sigma above background, while WOW! was only 30 sigmas. If it had been received in 1977 instead of the WOW! signal, they would have had to use numbers, English letters, Greek letters, Russian letters, Hebrew letters, Arabic letters and then Chinese ideograms.
I used to be sure that the chances of an entity able to evolve to a higher level of organization developing by non-evolutionary processes would be hyper-astronomical...not billions and billions, but billions of billions. But this has given me hope.
EDIT: sorry, I searched for both "tyc" and "1220-91-1" on the search forums and hit nothing, then found another thread on Google. I'll post there.
EDIT 2: Funny, I can't see a button to post there. I will mention that the 100 LY distance might be a typo. Checking the catalog, the star is of 11th+ magnitude:
http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=TYC+1220-91-1
this seems wrong for a solar twin at 100 LY, but it fits for 1000 LY.

Please advice...

OK, let's see if I do it right this time:
http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=TYC+1220-91-1

And for the original announcement, see:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1211.6470.pdf page 12.

So, for a dummy like me, what specifically are you saying? Has a signal been detected that is not of natural origin? And if so is all that remains is to deduce what the meaning of the transmission is. Or is this about a new way of searching for an intelligent signal?

---

Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

So, for a dummy like me, what specifically are you saying? Has a signal been detected that is not of natural origin? And if so is all that remains is to deduce what the meaning of the transmission is. Or is this about a new way of searching for an intelligent signal?

Benford has argued persuasively (if not quite conclusively) that the most efficient method for a civilization with limited resources and competing goals (and all civilizations will meet this description) is to send short "pings" separated by long intervals as the beam travels the sky/targets a long list of stars. For example, lets take this one.
It lasted 10 seconds. Say that it is from a Benford Beacon located at this star, and that the civilization is using a star list like the one million stars of the Breakthrough Initiative. Then we at Earth will receive this signal once every 10 million seconds, or roughly four months.
So we should, I propose, observe this star constantly for at least a period of four months, and probably considerably longer, to catch these pings and pin down their repetition period.
What is so interesting about this one is that:
1) It is ten times the strength of the WOW! Signal
2) It seems to be at or very near (within radial velocity Doppler Shift uncertainty) one of a few "Magic" frequencies optimal for interstellar communications...arguably better than the 1420 MHz frequency which would probably be kept quiet by any society interested in Astronomy (as we do) and
3) It came from the direction of a near-duplicate of our sun, one at least as old as our sun.
This signal looks just like what we would expect a Benford Beacon to look like. What is missing is only repeatability, which my suggestion would take care of.
BTW, In Pale Blue Dot Carl Sagan mention 11 such signals (in 1996) which, based on distribution around the Milky Way in the sky, had a 99.5% probability of coming from interstellar sources with a mean separation of several hundred Light Years.

I teach statistics; lets see the math. What did the putative signal contain ?

I teach statistics; lets see the math. What did the putative signal contain ?

As I said, it looks a lot like what you would expect from a Benford Beacon. It's not a matter of statistics until we actually make the observation. An antenna little larger than a satellite TV dish should be able to pick it up, so it is not like this would cost $100,000,000.00 to perform the experiment.

Although not wanting to disappoint, perhaps make a comparison with another discovery I think is some 48 years old.

When radio astronomers looked at the sky near what is known today as the Crab Nebula, or M1, in Taurus, they discovered a repeated pattern of signals, or possibly rather pulses, having a period of some 30 milliseconds.

At first, it was thought that this repeated signal was coming from an intelligent civilization in space, but later studies lead to the discovery of neutron stars.

Such stars are the supernova remnants which are not having enough mass to further collapse into a black hole which is not the main point here.

Rather, the beacon which is creating the radio beam or pulse, possibly radiating from each magnetic pole of the star is coming our way and therefore can be detected.

The neutron star in the center of the Crab Nebula is rotating along its axis 30 times a second, meaning its beacon is reaching us 30 times each second.

You think of certain objects as being fascinating, but writing this, I really need to check back with the exact facts.

Also, I assume that it should be well known that the gaussian is supposed to imply or signify the presence of a possible intelligent signal because of the signal curve it is supposed to be having.

The numbers being returned by the Seti@home client by means of their scores are only an indication of what may actually be present. There is a special word for this which for now I do not have.

Except for the possible WOW signal, which was detected analog only, an intelligent transmission coming from someone else has possibly never been detected. If such a thing rather is true, the representation of such a signal, or rather transmission, again is likely to be something else than what we might expect it to be.

For now, this is most likely the current limit when it comes to our detection capabilities.

Bluestar:
It was a different pulsar:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_B1919%2B21

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction.

Should tell that I happen to know most of these things, but here I actually was able to learn a couple of new things, which is very interesting.

The important fact is that being able to separating natural sources of radio emission from possible signals relating to the presence of others should be the main point of interest here.

For now we do not yet know their possible capabilities, only assume that they might exist.