Updates from Derren Brown and the Enigma Crew

“Just about a year ago Ragbir Bhathal was scanning the night sky for alien activity, just as he does every night. Except on this December eve Ragbir Bhathal found a strong, regular, repeating signal. Unless the whole thing stemmed from a huge glitch occurring simultaneously in all his million-dollar lab equipment, there stands a strong chance that Ragbir found a message sent by some intelligent, alien race.

Unlike most of the tin-foil hat wearing whackadoos in his field, Dr. Bhathal is a hard scientist working with university money to find extraterrestrials. In fact, he teaches the only Search for ExtraTerrestrial Life class offered in all of Australia. His hard-nosed approach perhaps explains why you’ve yet to hear this big news: Before he can broadcast his findings to the world, Bhathal must put them through rigorous examination. First, he needs to make sure it wasn’t caused by a glitch or some random, weird space phenomenon. After that, he’ll will need his findings peer-reviewed. Both steps require finding the signal again, which has taken nearly a year already

As proprietor of OZSETI, Dr. Bhathal combs the universe in search of light signals, not radio transmission. See, FM and AM can only travel so far, barely the distance between galaxies, before their signal’s lost in the noisiness of space. Light, on the other hand, travels far, fast, and without getting jumbled on the way to its destination. It was, in part, his interest in light-based contact that made Arthur C. Clarke put Ragbir on his shortlist of researchers who actually stand a chance of contacting alien life. With his recent findings, he goes straight to the top of ours.”

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