Pulsar Positioning System: A quest for evidence of extraterrestrial engineering

Abstract

Pulsars have at least two impressive applications. First, they can be used as highly accurate clocks, comparable in stability to atomic clocks; secondly, a small subset of pulsars, millisecond X-ray pulsars, provide all the necessary ingredients for a passive galactic positioning system. This is known in astronautics as X-ray pulsar-based navigation (XNAV). XNAV is comparable to GPS, except that it operates on a galactic scale. I propose a SETI-XNAV research program to test the hypothesis that this pulsar positioning system might be an instance of galactic-scale engineering by extraterrestrial beings (section 4). The paper starts by exposing the basics of pulsar navigation (section 2), continues with a critique of the rejection of the extraterrestrial hypothesis when pulsars were first discovered (section 3). The core section 4 proposes lines of inquiry for SETI-XNAV, related to: the pulsar distribution and power in the galaxy; their population; their evolution; possible pulse synchronizations; pulsar usability when navigating near the speed of light; decoding galactic coordinates; directed panspermia; and information content in pulses. Even if pulsars are natural, they are likely to be used as standards by ETIs in the galaxy (section 5). I discuss possible objections and potential benefits for humanity, whether the research program succeeds or not (section 6).

Major revision, article accepted for publication in the International Journal of Astrobiology. 51 pages, 11 figures, 3 tables, 2 argumentative maps

References in corpus (13)

• Rings and Radial Waves in the Disk of the Milky Way
• The Ĝ Infrared Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations with Large Energy Supplies. I. Background and Justification
• A model for the waveform behavior of accreting millisecond pulsars: Nearly aligned magnetic fields and moving emission regions
• The Ĝ Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations with Large Energy Supplies. IV. The Signatures and Information Content of Transiting Megastructures
• A glitch in the millisecond pulsar J0613-0200
• SETI via Leakage from Light Sails in Exoplanetary Systems
• Colloquium: Comparison of Astrophysical and Terrestrial Frequency Standards
• Variability, polarimetry, and timing properties of single pulses from PSR J1713+0747 using the Large European Array for Pulsars
• Simultaneous Single-Pulse Observations of Radio Pulsars: V. On the Broadband Nature of The Pulse Nulling Phenomenon in PSR B1133+16
• Timing, polarimetry and physics of the bright, nearby millisecond pulsar PSR J0437-4715 - a single-pulse perspective
• Constraints on Pulsar Evolution: The Joint Period-Spindown Distribution of Millisecond Pulsars
• Power Beaming Leakage Radiation as a SETI Observable
• Pulsar Positioning System: A quest for evidence of extraterrestrial engineering

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Strategies and Advice for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
• Interstellar communication network. I. Overview and assumptions
• Pulsar Positioning System: A quest for evidence of extraterrestrial engineering
• Projections of Earth's Technosphere: Luminosity and Mass as Limits to Growth
• Millisecond Pulsars as Standards: Timing, positioning and communication