Professor Abel Mendez reported receiving a unique, quasi-periodic signal from the very nearby star Ross 128 (FL Virginis) in May. He will attempt to receive this signal again on Sunday, July 16th, at the Arecibo Observatory,

While properly looking for a natural explanation first, the possibility of an intelligent signal has not been ruled out. Stellar flares have be advanced as the likeliest natural cause.

I have not been able to ascertain that stellar flares are known to display periodic behavior, and given the brief period of observation, about 10 minutes, this seems, if anything, even less likely. A link to an article with more details, below:

http://www.geekwire.com/2017/strange-ross-128-arecibo-radio/

Did he record and try to decode the signal. If so what did he find. If not, why not ?

I'm sure that, like any good scientist, Prof. Mendez recorded the data he sought to collect. This signal was found during a survey of red dwarf stars, intended to document their activity in the part of the radio range where stellar flares are prominent.

Decoding a signal assumes that it's been encoded in the first place. So far, they're still merely trying to reacquire the signal, so that its cause can, they hope, be ascertained .

Has Ross 128 already been a target of Breakthrough Listen with the Green Bank, and if so have we crunched the data yet? Its my understanding that the frequencies received were higher than we look for, but it would still be interesting to know.

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I checked the 'Breakthrough Listen at UC Berkeley' website. They list the stars that have already been monitored, either at Green Bank or Parkes. Ross 128 (HIP 57548) was not listed.

Hmm. Too bad we can't request specific work units when they become available. :-)

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But reports of interesting signals from areas of the sky found by others are something that Seti cannot do anything about. We can't go to Arecibo or the GBT and say please stop what you are doing, and point it here for the next few days. Then we get targetted workunits to crunch. Nice as that might be.

I had assumed that the GBT was looking at more or less the same places (and using appropriate frequencies) that SETI wanted to do, being the stars with the planets most likely to have life. Is that not usually the case?

I will be driving down there in a couple of months and wanted to wave at them. I last saw it a few months before its completion, probably in 2000 or 2001. But if they are not on the ball, I could change that.

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While we await further developments, another link to information on what Prof. Mendez has observed so far, and his plans for the near future:

http://phl.upr.edu/library/notes/ross128

Prof. Mendez notes the difficulty with type II stellar flares as an explanation, stating that they occur at lower frequencies than the 4 to 5 GHz range he was using. Stellar flares of this sort also present other difficulties.

First, these have a much narrower bandwidth than the signal he observed. Second, they are comparatively rare, occurring on the time scale of tens of hours. Prof. Mendez reported receiving a number of impulses within the space of just ten minutes.

The BLP which has some influence over where the GBT is observing has a "hit list" of locations to look at. This list may be "dynamic", with locations being added or removed depending on what is found. There is no doubt a delay between the decision and the action depending on what the telescope schedule is, not forgetting of course there is planned maintenance taking place during the summer months which may result delays in observation of a "juicy target".

As for the recording and analysis of the data - most radio telescope observations these days are not real time, but are done on recordings, and given this announcement was made some time after the observation so it is quite probable that this signal was found some time after the observation.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

There is apparently a good deal of scientific interest in Prof. Mendez' 'very peculiar signals' . He reports that the Green Bank Observatory, the Allen Telescope Array, and others will put their usual work aside, in order to join in his observations today.

Prof. Mendez hopes to at least determine today, if the signals are truly at stellar distance, rather than some form of obscure form a man-made interference. Nearby sources of interference have been ruled out, but distant spacecraft of Earthly origin have been suggested. Given a long enough observation run, it should be possible to eliminate these, too. Their motion relative to the fixed stars should then become discernible.

I cannot for the life of me understand why they don't look to see if there is a message in the so-called signal. If so, then it would warrant further investigation. If the investigation is just to figure out what is causing the "signal", then that is far different than reporting it on SETI boards and implying some form of alien life.

It seems to me that this is going about SETI backwards from the proper protocols. Maybe nobody claimed that this was a SETI-related object of interest.

Since this signal is interesting it has already been detected ( or lifted up) above the background noise. If there is no modulation or on/off pulses then it should be discarded as having an indication of alien intelligence. It would be worthy of further study for the purpose of determining if it is a persistent phenomenon caused by cosmic events.

I believe that the way we are going about SETI here is "wasting " a massive amount of computing power. The researcher in this case did not use Seti@home to determine that this was a loud "signal".

How did the Allen array do it's computing.

As with most (all?) signals from radio telescopes there are many sets of analysis done on them. SETI@Home is just one of them, some will be looking for specific artifacts, some for general patterns. Often there is a "Mk1 eyeball" of the plotted data, just to see if there is anything that stands out. It would appear that this is what spotted the strange signal that is now being investigated further using different telescopes and different sets of observers.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Prof. Mendez reports that observations of Ross 128 yesterday, July 16th, were successful. He hopes to announce an answer to the question:What is causing the signals? by the end of this week. It sounds as if the mysterious signal was heard again, and well enough to allow a prompt analysis.

I guess that they need to prove that it was not an anomaly before further analysis ?

The signal appears to be an anomaly, in any case. That's what has generated wide interest in it. It doesn't agree well with any proposed hypothesis.

The first goal of the analysis, as described by Prof. Mendez, is to determine if the signal is truly at stellar distance, or is caused by one of our own satellites. This latter seems to be a long shot, as the satellite would have to be very distant, indeed, to appear to move with the fixed stars.

Aliens are at the bottom of the list of possible explanations, for me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_128
Ross 128

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Perhaps have a cigar instead, since noone apparently mentioned the subject of aliens here.

Yes, the pace does seem quite rapid, now, compared to the usual delay in processing data and publishing the results of scientific research. Prof. Mendez has spoken about his desire to resolve this mystery promptly.