AAS 195th Meeting, January 2000
Session 58. Solar System
Oral, Thursday, January 13, 2000, 10:00-11:30am, Regency VI

## [58.07] Evidence that Radio Pulsars may be Artificial Beacons of ETI Origin

P. A. LaViolette (The Starburst Foundation)

This paper presents evidence indicating that pulsar sky positions are nonrandomly distributed in a pattern that is not easily attributed to natural causes. As one example, about 12% of the pulsar population are concentrated along the galactic equator in an arrow-like" clump extending from \ell ~ 32\arcdeg~ to \ell ~ 57\arcdeg, the number of pulsars progressively rising with increasing longitude until at the northern one-radian longitude point (\ell = 57.24\arcdeg) their concentration drops precipitously by almost 3 fold, as if to mark this location. The pulsar clump does not overly any enhancement in star population and hence has no easy explanation if pulsars are the result of natural stellar evolution, nor is the clump an artifact of observational selection. On the other hand, if pulsars are ETI communication beacons, an obvious choice as a topic for communication would be to indicate the termination point of a one radian arc deviation from the Galactic center since such a geometrically unique off-center viewer-dependent location is not preferred by any natural process. Moreover designating this longitude indicates to us that the senders know the sky location of the Galactic center as seen from our vantage point, and hence that they intend their beamed message specifically for our particular Galactic locale.

Other nonrandom pulsar positions, further emphasize the northern one-radian longitude point. For example, this pulsar clump termination point is marked by the Millisecond Pulsar (B1937+21), the most rapid of all known pulsars and also one of only two pulsars known to emit giant pulses as well as optical pulses. This unique pulsar is the closest of all pulsars to this one-radian benchmark, deviating by just 0.27\arcdeg. In addition, the tip of this clump is also marked by another equally unique millisecond pulsar (B1957+20), which is the second most rapid pulsar in the sky and is distinguished as being one of just 4 eclipsing binary millisecond pulsars. This second pulsar is unusual in that its period is just 3.18 percent longer than that of the Millisecond pulsar, approximating the percentage amount that the sky position longitude of B1957+20 (\ell = 59.2\arcdeg) surpasses the longitude of the one radian point (\ell = 57.24\arcdeg). This and other nonrandom pulsar position relations, suggest that pulsars comprise a vast network of ETI beacons that extends throughout the Galaxy and is beaming signals in our particular direction.1

1) LaViolette, P. A. The Talk of the Galaxy," Alexandria, VA: Starlane Publications, 2000.