Seti and serendipity

Abstract

The serendipitous detection of an ETI signal during the course of regularly scheduled radio astronomical observations has been an intriguing possibility for the past two decades. For some, this has been enough. For others, unsatisfied with such a passive approach, it has been enough to attempt detection through unconventional applications of radio astronomical instrumentation. Had detections occurred during such searches, they too would have been serendipitous to the development of the field of radio astronomy. For still others, use of equipment intended for the detection of weak, noise-like signals from astrophysical sources has not been enough. SETI-specific instrumentation having unique capabilities for the efficient detection of a moderately broad range of artificial signals has been designed and partially constructed. As a result, it is now possible to consider what serendipitous discoveries of an astrophysical nature might result from the use of this equipment in regularly scheduled SETI observations. The SETI-specific instrumentation will view the Universe through a set of observational filters which have never before been systematically employed by astronomers. In this paper, a particular model of what constitutes a truly new and unique astrophysical phenomenon is used to predict the likelihood of an astrophysically serendipitous discovery during the course of the proposed SETI microwave observing program. Having considered what SETI may do for astronomy, we return to the more traditional approach to serendipity and discuss what a newly designed background software package for the Very Large Array of radiotelescopes can do for SETI. This project is the logical follow-on to the symbiotic use of data contained in stored radio maps from the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope, which was described at the IAA CETI Review Symposium during the 1981 IAF Congress in Rome.