Has anyone ever recieved a true "signal" from a SETI station?

Question

please give me the details, Id love to hear about it.

Answer 1

Not that we know of.

Answer 2

Yes, SETI has detected several candidate signals, such as the WOW! signal.

Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks of the SETI program is that it makes observations which are very unlikely to ever be repeated.

Imagine trying to receive what are essentially planetary TV and radio signals from tens of thousands of light years away. Even with a radio telescope, these transmissions are too faint to detect normally. SETI relies on a phenomenon called interstellar scintillation to amplify the signals. Scintillation is the same process that makes stars twinkle at night, except that starlight scintillates as it passes through the Earth's atmosphere and narrowband radio signals scintillate as they travel through the interstellar medium (the tenuous gas between the stars).

Just as stars twinkle, ISM scintillation causes radio signals to be amplified by thousands of times, up to detectable levels--- but only for very short periods and only once in every few thousand years. So to verify any signal received, you'd have to constantly observe the same piece of sky for a thousand years or more.

This is why SETI does not receive NSF funding. *shrug*

Answer 3

It's not really known; There are usually between 3 and 10 "possibles" picked up every year, which are then painstakingly analyzed & tracked to see if there is some Earth-based reason for the signal, and so far (at least as far I'm aware) there have been zero signals which didn't turn out to be man-generated, or naturally occuring.

and, you can bet that if one *is* detected, the SETI group will be fairly vocal about it.

Answer 4

there was the WOW signal. i think in 1997 a seti station recieved a signal that was different from the usual space noise. the scientists were so amzed the first thing they wrote on the sheet when the saw it was WOW. and now it is know as the WOW! signal

Answer 5

They have never come up with anything positive.
They did think they had something on one occasion but it came from around here.
If they get a verifiable signal I'm sure the world will know about it in a very short time.

Answer 6

I do not want to seem dumb, but what, exactly, would a "TRUE" signal look like?

Do you suggest that it might be sort of an EMail Message?
Maybe the distant planet has Television Channels just like we do and they sit at home watching Sony TV's late at night. So our "Signal" intercept might be a TV signal that just slips through somehow??? Or, could the "signal" be like an SOS from somewhere way off in the distance of Outer Space in a flashing light???

My goal here is not to sound foolish, but to make you aware that the "Signals" you refer to might not be as easy to identify as envisioned at first thought. What signals do deep sea fish emit into outer space??? What signals float into outer space from flying birds, and roaming cattle??? Help us to understand what kind of Signals you would look
for: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - .

Answer 7

Actually, yes. Seti once picked up a repeating signal - it was strong, and it pulsed at a constant rate. Eventually we realized that we were seeing a new type of star - a quasar - which gives off radio waves in regular pulses.

Answer 8

Not yet, if someone does I'm sure it will be top story on all the news reports.

Answer 9

Might have been a pulsar instead.

Wasn't it coded LGM at first (little green men)?