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A. A. Jackson

Publications and source records attributed to A. A. Jackson.

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Novel Technosignatures

Technosignatures can represent a sign of technology that may infer the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. This had usually meant searches for extraterrestrial intelligence using narrow-band radio signals or pulsed lasers. Back in 1960 Freeman Dyson put forward the idea that advanced civilizations may construct large structures in order to capture, for use, the energy of their local star, leading to an object with an unusual infrared signature. Later it was noted that other objects may represent the signature of very advanced instrumentalities, such as interstellar vehicles, beaming stations for propulsion, unusual beacons not using radio or laser radiation but emission of gamma rays, neutrinos or gravitational radiation. Signs may be unintentional or may be directed. Among directed and undirected signs we present some models for signaling and by-product radiation that might be produced by extremely advanced societies not usually considered in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

physics.pop-ph

A Neutrino Beacon

Observational SETI has concentrated on using electromagnetism as the carrier , namely radio waves and laser radiation. Michael Hippke [2] has pointed out that it may be possible to use neutrinos or gravitational waves as signals. Gravitational waves demand the command of the generation of very large scale amounts of energy, Jackson and Benford [3]. This paper describes a beacon that uses beamed neutrinos as the signal. Neutrinos, like gravitational waves, have the advantage of extremely low extinction in the interstellar medium. To make use of neutrinos an advanced civilization can use a gravitational lens as a focus and amplifier. The lens can be a neutron star or a black hole. Using wave optics one can calculate the advantage of gravitational lensing for amplification of a beam and along the optical axis it is exceptionally large. Even though the amplification is very large the dimeter of the beam is quite small, less that a centimeter. This implies that a large constellation of neutrino transmitters would have to enclose the local neutron star or black hole to cover the sky. This means that such a beacon would have to be built by a Kardashev Type II civilization.

astro-ph.IM

A Gravitational Wave Transmitter

We consider how an advanced civilization might build a radiator to send gravitational waves signals by using small black holes. Micro black holes on the scale of centimeters but with masses of asteroids to planets are manipulated with a super advanced instrumentality, possibly with very large electromagnetic fields. The machine envisioned emits gravitational waves in the GHz frequency range. If the source to receiver distance is a characteristic length in the galaxy, up to 10000 light years, the masses involved are at least planetary in magnitude. To provide the energy for this system we posit a very advanced civilization that has a Kerr black hole at its disposal and can extract energy by way of super-radiance. Background gravitational radiation sets a limit on the dimensionless amplitude that can be measured at interstellar distance using a LIGO like detector.

physics.pop-ph