On 15th January a report was posted by KTVU – TV from California that began with this comment - “Across the globe, researchers searching for signs of life in space were abuzz this week with word that a mystery signal has been picked up by a giant radio-telescope in Puerto Rico.”
That comment caused the hearts of UFO researchers across the globe to go all a-flutter. Yes, all very exciting except the journalist reporting the story got it all wrong. Turns out radio astronomer, Dan Wertheimer, who is affiliated with SETI was interviewed about sending signals into space (so-called "active SETI") as opposed to just listening for aliens. The scuttlebutt is that after the interview Werthmeier talked to the reporter about some of the astronomy he does, including looking at radio transients: bursts of radio waves that are caused by one-off events like colliding neutron stars, exploding stars, and so on.
Somehow in the article the reporter mixed up the observation of the transient signals with detecting a signal from E.T. Worse, the observations of the transients weren't from Arecibo, and they weren't from Wertheimer as initially claimed. It was another astronomer altogether, observing with the giant Parkes radio dish in Australia!
In a retraction, KTVU-TV says the signal has not been confirmed as any sign of extra-terrestrial intelligence, although the Allen array in California is now actively searching for more of these signals.
Well, we want to know who’s raking the media over the coals about getting this story wrong? Who’s making the media take responsibility for circulating false stories? If this were an erroneous story about, say, a presidential candidate, it would have been withdrawn quicksmart and with a lot of loud shouting. But in this case it was a story on the possible existence of little green men that the media got wrong, and really, it doesn't matter if it’s wrong, because nobody takes this stuff seriously anyway. Not even SETI.
That comment caused the hearts of UFO researchers across the globe to go all a-flutter. Yes, all very exciting except the journalist reporting the story got it all wrong. Turns out radio astronomer, Dan Wertheimer, who is affiliated with SETI was interviewed about sending signals into space (so-called "active SETI") as opposed to just listening for aliens. The scuttlebutt is that after the interview Werthmeier talked to the reporter about some of the astronomy he does, including looking at radio transients: bursts of radio waves that are caused by one-off events like colliding neutron stars, exploding stars, and so on.
Somehow in the article the reporter mixed up the observation of the transient signals with detecting a signal from E.T. Worse, the observations of the transients weren't from Arecibo, and they weren't from Wertheimer as initially claimed. It was another astronomer altogether, observing with the giant Parkes radio dish in Australia!
In a retraction, KTVU-TV says the signal has not been confirmed as any sign of extra-terrestrial intelligence, although the Allen array in California is now actively searching for more of these signals.
Well, we want to know who’s raking the media over the coals about getting this story wrong? Who’s making the media take responsibility for circulating false stories? If this were an erroneous story about, say, a presidential candidate, it would have been withdrawn quicksmart and with a lot of loud shouting. But in this case it was a story on the possible existence of little green men that the media got wrong, and really, it doesn't matter if it’s wrong, because nobody takes this stuff seriously anyway. Not even SETI.
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