LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Lakeport Police Department is holding a community policing town hall on Thursday, March 5.
The town hall will take place from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at Lakeport City Hall, 225 Park St.
Topics to be covered include the Lakeport Community Policing Survey, Neighborhood Watch, the police dog program, Lakeport crime statistics, officer training, security camera registration program, legislation affecting public safety, deescalation and crisis intervention, and police recruitment.
The agency’s goal is to provide the public with information about its current operations and plans to continue with community policing in the future.
The public will have an opportunity to ask questions and provide feedback to the department.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County Animal Care and Control has hounds, terriers, an Australian Shepherd and a Rhodesian Ridgeback waiting for homes this week.
Dogs available for adoption this week include mixes of Australian Shepherd, bull terrier, fox terrier, Labrador Retriever, pit bull, Rhodesian Ridgeback and terrier.
Dogs that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are either neutered or spayed, microchipped and, if old enough, given a rabies shot and county license before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.
If you're looking for a new companion, visit the shelter. There are many great pets hoping you'll choose them.
The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption (additional dogs on the animal control Web site not listed are still “on hold”).
‘Goofy’
“Goofy” is getting top billing this week, as he’s been waiting a long time for a new home – since the start of November, after he was found on the highway in Clearlake.
He is a young male Rhodesian Ridgeback with a short tan and black coat.
Shelter staff said this boy is great with other dogs, although he is high energy and would benefit from obedience training. He would love to go jogging every day, he is very food motivated and willing to learn new things.
He’s in kennel No. 33, ID No. 13210.
Male Australian Shepherd
This young male Australian Shepherd has a tricolor coat and brown eyes.
He is in kennel No. 8, ID No. 13550.
Male pit bull terrier
This male pit bull terrier has a short brindle coat and brown eyes.
He is in kennel No. 10, ID No. 13507.
Female pit bull-Labrador Retriever mix
This young female pit bull-Labrador Retriever mix has a short black coat and brown eyes.
She is in kennel No. 12, ID No. 13555.
Male pit bull terrier
This male pit bull terrier has a short blue and white coat and brown eyes.
He is in kennel No. 15, ID No. 13546.
‘Luna’
“Luna” is a female husky with a medium-length gray and white coat and blue eyes.
She has already been spayed.
She is in kennel No. 16, ID No. 13540.
‘Ricky’
“Ricky” is a male pit bull terrier with a short red coat and green eyes.
He already has been neutered.
He’s in kennel No. 18, ID No. 4850.
‘Hank’
“Hank” is a male bull terrier-Labrador Retriever mix with a short brown and white coat and gold eyes.
He’s in kennel No. 20, ID No. 13510.
Male and female fox terriers
These two fox terriers, one male, one female, have short brown and white coats and brown eyes.
The female is in kennel No. 22a, ID No. 13528; the male is in kennel No. 22b, ID No. 13530.
‘Nook’
“Nook” is a female hound mix with a short tricolor coat and brown eyes.
She has already been spayed.
She is in kennel No. 23, ID No. 11790.
Male husky
This young male husky has a long white coat and blue eyes.
Shelter staff said he was found at Lower Lake High School.
He is in kennel No. 26, ID No. 13529.
‘Butter’
“Butter” is a female terrier with a long tricolor coat and brown eyes.
She’s in kennel No. 31A, ID No. 13534.
‘Chase’
“Chase” is a male husky-pit bull terrier mix with a short tan coat and blue eyes.
He is in kennel No. 32, ID No. 13541.
Lake County Animal Care and Control is located at 4949 Helbush in Lakeport, next to the Hill Road Correctional Facility.
Office hours are Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday. The shelter is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday and on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
For more information call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – An early Saturday morning structure fire resulted in two people being flown out to regional trauma centers for the treatment of burns.
The fire in the 7200 block of Liberty Street in Nice was first reported just before 3:20 a.m. Saturday, according to radio reports.
Northshore Fire personnel arriving at the scene minutes later reported finding a fully involved mobile home with multiple other structures threatened.
Incident command reported that the home’s residents said that everyone was out of the home and accounted for, based on radio traffic.
Firefighters found one person with third-degree burns on both hands and another with smoke inhalation. Incident command requested an air ambulance respond for the burn victim.
A short time later, Cal Fire dispatch reported receiving a request from another unit at the scene for a second air ambulance due to locating a second burn victim.
The air ambulances landed at the Sutter Lakeside Hospital’s helipad, first one from CalStar followed by one from REACH, according to radio reports.
The Northshore Fire ground ambulance with the two burn patients arrived at the landing zone just before 4:30 a.m., just head of incident command reporting that the fire had been knocked down.
Incident command estimated that firefighters would need to do a few hours of mop up.
Also responding to the scene were the Northshore Fire Support Team and Pacific Gas and Electric, according to radio traffic.
Incident command requested Red Cross respond to provide assistance for five adults and two children.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County Animal Care and Control has a feline trio of adoptable cats this week.
The following cats at the shelter have been cleared for adoption.
Female tuxedo cat
This female tuxedo cat has a short coat and green eyes.
She is in cat room kennel No. 4, ID No. 13545.
Female domestic short hair
This female domestic short hair has a lynx point and tortie coat and blue eyes.
She is in cat room kennel No. 7, ID No. 13521.
Male domestic short hair
This male domestic short hair has an all-black coat and gold eyes.
He is in cat room kennel No. 44, ID No. 13520.
Lake County Animal Care and Control is located at 4949 Helbush in Lakeport, next to the Hill Road Correctional Facility.
Office hours are Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday. The shelter is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
For more information call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
Can the feared anthrax toxin become an ally in the war against cancer? Successful treatment of pet dogs suffering bladder cancer with an anthrax-related treatment suggest so.
Anthrax is a disease caused by a bacterium, known as Bacillus anthracis, which releases a toxin that causes the skin to break down and forms ulcers, and triggers pneumonia and muscle and chest pain. To add to its sinister resumé, and underscore its lethal effects, this toxin has been infamously usedas a bioweapon.
However, my colleagues and I found a way to tame this killer and put it to good use against another menace: bladder cancer.
Among all cancers, the one affecting the bladder is the sixth most common and in 2019 caused more than 17,000 deaths in the U.S. Of all patients that receive surgery to remove this cancer, about 70% will return to the physician’s office with more tumors. This is psychologically devastating for the patient and makes the cancer of the bladder one of the most expensive to treat.
To make things worse, currently there is a worldwide shortage of Bacillus Calmette-Guerin, a bacterium used to make the preferred immunotherapy for decreasing bladder cancer recurrence after surgery. This situation has left doctors struggling to meet the needs of their patients. Therefore, there is a clear need for more effective strategies to treat bladder cancer.
Anthrax comes to the rescue
Years ago scientists in the Collier lab modified the anthrax toxin by physically linking it to a naturally occurring protein called the epidermal growth factor (EGF) that binds to the EGF receptor, which is abundant on the surface of bladder cancer cells. When the EGF protein binds to the receptor – like a key fits a lock – it causes the cell to engulf the EGF-anthrax toxin, which then induces the cancer cell to commit suicide (a process called apoptosis), while leaving healthy cells alone.
This highlights the potential of this agent to provide an efficient and fast alternative to the current treatments (which can take between two and three hours to administer over a period of months). I also think it is good news is that the modified anthrax toxin spared normal cells. This suggests that this treatment could have fewer side effects.
Helping our best friends
These encouraging results led my lab to join forces with Dr. Knapp’s group at the Purdue veterinary hospital to treat pet dogs suffering from bladder cancer.
Canine patients for whom all available conventional anti-cancer therapeutics were unsuccessful were considered eligible for these tests. Only after standard tests proved the agent to be safe in laboratory animals, and with the consent of their owners, six eligible dogs with terminal bladder cancer were treated with the anthrax toxin-derived agent.
Two to five doses of this medicine, delivered directly inside the bladder via a catheter, was enough to shrink the tumor by an average of 30%. We consider these results impressive given the initial large size of the tumor and its resistance to other treatments.
There is hope for all
Our collaborators at Indiana University Hospital surgically removed bladder cells from human patients and sent them to my lab for testing the agent. At Purdue my team found these cells to be very sensitive to the anthrax toxin-derived agent as well. These results suggest that this novel anti-bladder cancer strategy could be effective in human patients.
The treatment strategy that we have devised is still experimental. Therefore, it is not available for treatment of human patients yet. Nevertheless, my team is actively seeking the needed economic support and required approvals to move this therapeutic approach into human clinical trials. Plans to develop a new, even better generation of agents and to expand their application to the fight against other cancers are ongoing.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – In June 2019, 31 Upward Bound Program seniors from Lower Lake and Upper Lake High Schools walked across the graduation stage having accomplished their four-year goal: College.
The students began the Upward Bound program as freshmen and participated in the college preparation program and elective class for all four years of high school.
These low-income, emerging first-generation college students learned how to turn their dreams into a reality.
In fact, 87 percent of the 2019 Upward Bound seniors enrolled in college by August 2019 as college freshmen, with 55 percent being accepted to and attending four-year universities.
Upward Bound is a federally-funded outreach and student services program in the United States designed to identify and provide services for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The services are administered, funded and implemented by the U.S. Department of Education.
Sonoma State was awarded this federal funding and administers the grant program in Lake County.
The Upward Bound Program in Lake County has undoubtedly changed the college-going percentage at Lower Lake and Upper Lake High Schools.
Upward Bound began at Lower Lake High School in 2008 and, since and, since then, has impacted eight graduating classes.
Program participants are tracked for six years following high school graduation and are expected to earn a degree in that time. In 2019, the first two cohorts of Upward Bound graduated from LLHS had reached that six-year mark.
While only 49 percent of low-income students complete their degree nation-wide (PELL recipients), 57 percent of these Upward Bound students had completed a degree. Program leaders said this is remarkable for Lake County, where the average degree completion rate is 16 percent.
After graduating from schools such as UC Santa Barbara and UC Merced, many students from the 2011 and 2013 cohorts have returned to Lake County as successful social workers, teachers and accountants.
The first cohort of Upward Bound graduates from Upper Lake High School will reach their six-year mark in 2020.
Upward Bound has high expectations for its newest graduates, class of 2019, who are attending schools such as UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Merced, Sacramento State, Chico State and many more including local community colleges.
Upward Bound program alumni and staff are working to create a nonprofit organization to give scholarships to Upward Bound seniors, for whom the finances of college are a serious barrier.
“These students have worked incredibly hard for four years to be accepted to a four-year university, and we do not want to see a lack of funds hold them back from achieving their dream,” said Program Director Shannon Smith.
For additional information or to donate to the Lake and Mendocino Upward Bound Scholarship fund, please contact Shannon Smith at 707-245-7972 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – On Wednesday, the Middletown Unified School community took a moment to step back and recognize the tremendous efforts of teachers, parents and others to bring back the Middletown Unified School Band.
This year signifies the year that the first students – from the year the program was restarted – are now seniors at Middletown High School.
About 10 years ago there was a wonderful confluence of teachers, parents, and community members who came together as a concerned group wanting to restore the MUSD school band. An entire generation of kids had passed through the district with no instrumental music program.
They approached the school board to voice their concerns. The school board said, “Show us that this is something that the community wants and we can move forward.”
So talented musicians Ami Barker, Reikor Deacon and David Leonard, who were teachers, as well as parent Patricia Jekel started volunteering after school to teach music to students.
They asked the school board for permission to use the old instruments that had been locked in an unused portable classroom out by the agriculture department and were gathering dust, and they received permission.
Allison and Greg Rodgers did major community fundraising through open mic nights and getting the word out in newspaper articles, and at Mountain High raising over $3,000 to recondition the old instruments and to buy music books and supplies.
Calpine Corp. also has been a major donor to the program, contributing funding for uniforms, band chairs, reconditioning instruments and other supplies.
After two years of teaching children, the volunteers returned to the school board and the new band performed.
The board was unanimous in approval of a paid band instructor. Patricia Jekel was hired as the new instrumental music instructor.
Those first students have now reached their senior year of high school, and so the Middletown Unified school band is reconstructed.
At Wednesday evening’s school board meeting, a short montage of photos and video clips showed an overview from the beginning days of the program to the current year.
The video displayed that as the students moved into middle school and then high school, Jekel incorporated more of the regional programs in which other bands participate.
For example, the band now participates in the Solo and Ensemble Festival at Chico State University, the Mendo-Lake Honor Band, the Middle School Band Camp (Jump Start in Music through Cazadero Music Camp) and Christmas in Middletown.
The High School Pep Band now performs at football games and at school rallies.
Of course, there are “growing pains” with the growing program. The group said there are new opportunities that create new challenges.
The new Band Booster group that has formed looks forward to supporting the band in finding solutions to present to the board, as well as fundraising for the program.
The group said it’s thrilling that this year one of the tasks is finding a way to celebrate senior band members because it has been more than 20 years since Middletown Unified has had senior band members.
The group thanked Patricia Jekel for guiding the resurrection of the MUSD School Band.
For more information, or to help with funding support for the program, please contact Jekel at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
NASA has selected four Discovery Program investigations to develop concept studies for new missions.
Although they’re not official missions yet and some ultimately may not be chosen to move forward, the selections focus on compelling targets and science that are not covered by NASA’s active missions or recent selections.
Final selections will be made next year.
NASA’s Discovery Program invites scientists and engineers to assemble a team to design exciting planetary science missions that deepen what we know about the solar system and our place in it.
These missions will provide frequent flight opportunities for focused planetary science investigations. The goal of the program is to address pressing questions in planetary science and increase our understanding of our solar system.
“These selected missions have the potential to transform our understanding of some of the solar system’s most active and complex worlds,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate. “Exploring any one of these celestial bodies will help unlock the secrets of how it, and others like it, came to be in the cosmos.”
Each of the four nine-month studies will receive $3 million to develop and mature concepts and will conclude with a Concept Study Report. After evaluating the concept studies, NASA will continue development of up to two missions towards flight.
The proposals were chosen based on their potential science value and feasibility of development plans following a competitive peer-review process.
The selected proposals are as follows.
DAVINCI+ (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging Plus)
DAVINCI+ will analyze Venus’ atmosphere to understand how it formed, evolved and determine whether Venus ever had an ocean. DAVINCI+ plunges through Venus’ inhospitable atmosphere to precisely measure its composition down to the surface.
The instruments are encapsulated within a purpose-built descent sphere to protect them from the intense environment of Venus. The “+” in DAVINCI+ refers to the imaging component of the mission, which includes cameras on the descent sphere and orbiter designed to map surface rock-type. The last U.S.-led, in-situ mission to Venus was in 1978.
The results from DAVINCI+ have the potential to reshape our understanding of terrestrial planet formation in our solar system and beyond. James Garvin of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is the principal investigator. Goddard would provide project management.
Io Volcano Observer (IVO)
IVO would explore Jupiter’s moon, Io, to learn how tidal forces shape planetary bodies. Io is heated by the constant crush of Jupiter’s gravity and is the most volcanically active body in the solar system.
Little is known about Io’s specific characteristics, such as whether a magma ocean exists in its interior. Using close-in flybys, IVO would assess how magma is generated and erupted on Io.
The mission’s results could revolutionize our understanding of the formation and evolution of rocky, terrestrial bodies, as well as icy ocean worlds in our solar system, and extrasolar planets across the universe.
Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona in Tucson is the principal investigator. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland would provide project management.
TRIDENT
Trident would explore Triton, a unique and highly active icy moon of Neptune, to understand pathways to habitable worlds at tremendous distances from the Sun. NASA’s Voyager 2 mission showed that Triton has active resurfacing – generating the second youngest surface in the solar system – with the potential for erupting plumes and an atmosphere.
Coupled with an ionosphere that can create organic snow and the potential for an interior ocean, Triton is an exciting exploration target to understand how habitable worlds may develop in our solar system and others.
Using a single fly-by, Trident would map Triton, characterize active processes, and determine whether the predicted subsurface ocean exists. Louise Prockter of the Lunar and Planetary Institute/Universities Space Research Association in Houston is the principal investigator. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or JPL, in Pasadena, California, would provide project management
VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy)
VERITAS would map Venus’ surface to determine the planet’s geologic history and understand why Venus developed so differently than the Earth.
Orbiting Venus with a synthetic aperture radar, VERITAS charts surface elevations over nearly the entire planet to create three-dimensional reconstructions of topography and confirm whether processes, such as plate tectonics and volcanism, are still active on Venus.
VERITAS would also map infrared emissions from the surface to map Venus’ geology, which is largely unknown. Suzanne Smrekar of NASA’s JPL is the principal investigator. JPL would provide project management.
The concepts were chosen from proposals submitted in 2019 under NASA Announcement of Opportunity NNH19ZDA010O, Discovery Program. The selected investigations will be managed by the Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, as part of the Discovery Program.
The Discovery Program conducts space science investigations in the Planetary Science Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, guided by NASA’s agency priorities and the Decadal Survey process of the National Academy of Sciences.
Established in 1992, NASA’s Discovery Program has supported the development and implementation of over 20 missions and instruments. These selections are part of the ninth Discovery Program competition.
MENDOCINO NATIONAL FOREST, Calif. – The Mendocino National Forest offers several fee-free days throughout the year at Forest Service managed campgrounds and the Red Bluff Recreation Area boat launch.
The fee waiver does not apply to campsites at Lake Pillsbury that are operated under concessionaire through PG&E, Sycamore Grove Campground at Red Bluff Recreation Area and Pine Mountain Lookout on the Upper Lake District.
The 2020 fee-free dates are:
– Feb. 17: President’s Day; – June 13: National Get Outdoors Day; – Sept. 26: National Public Lands Day; – Nov. 11: Veterans Day.
“The Mendocino National Forest offers nearly one million acres to camp, hike, bird-watch and ride off-highway vehicles, just a three-hour drive north of Sacramento and San Francisco. We welcome families and friends to come and explore the Mendocino National Forest on these fee-free days,” Mendocino National Forest Supervisor Ann Carlson said.
In addition, all Mendocino National Forest offices (except for the Stonyford Work Center) will close Monday, Feb. 17, in observance of President’s Day and will resume regular business hours at 8 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 18.
The Stonyford Work Center will close Tuesday, Feb. 18, for the holiday and open at 8 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 19.
To prepare for a trip to the Mendocino, tell a friend or relative where you are going and when you are returning.
Carry emergency equipment and appropriate maps in your vehicle and remember that food, gas, and lodging are not available on the forest road network or within forest boundaries.
Roads are not plowed and cell phone coverage is not reliable in many areas of the forest.
For more information about the forest, please call 530-934-3316 or visit the website.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – One person was reported to have died and two others were seriously injured in a solo-vehicle wreck on Highway 20 late on Saturday afternoon.
The crash was reported just before 5 p.m. Saturday on Highway 20 at Morine Ranch Road in Clearlake Oaks.
Northshore and Cal Fire firefighters and California Highway Patrol officers were dispatched on the report of a single vehicle into a tree.
Reports from the scene described the vehicle as a dark-colored SUV.
The first firefighters to arrive at the scene reported finding one person deceased and two people with critical injuries trapped inside of the vehicle, according to radio reports.
Two air ambulances were requested, with Cal Fire dispatch reporting that REACH and CalStar would respond to a landing zone at Orchard Shores Homeowners Association.
Radio reports indicated that firefighters extricated the two surviving crash victims and they were flown to out-of-county trauma centers.
The sheriff’s office and a mortuary also responded to the scene due to the fatality, according to radio reports.
More details were not immediately available from the CHP, which separately confirmed the fatality over the air and on its online incident logs.
Additional information will be published as it becomes available.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The 45th Redbud Audubon Christmas Bird Count is in the books.
After reviewing and eliminating possible double-counted birds, the total species remains at 134 species reported on the 2019 Christmas Bird Count held Dec. 14.
This number is a little below average (136) over the last 22 years. The high was 153 species in 2007, and the lowest count was 122 in 2003 and 2018.
There was a reduction in birding hours this year but despite that, the total number of birds seen was 41,666, which is a bit higher than average over the last 16 years of 39,636.
The highest count is still 135,312 in 2003, a year when thousands of Western and Clarke’s grebes were on Clear Lake.
The rare birds seen this year were the tri-colored blackbird, yellow-headed blackbird and great-tailed grackle.
This is the first CBC sighting of the yellow-headed blackbird, the second CBC sighting of the great-tailed grackle, and the eighth CBC sighting of the tricolored blackbird.
Other high numbers included 71 hooded mergansers; nine greater white-fronted geese; 3,355 American white pelicans; 4,510 double-crested cormorants; 77 brown-headed cowbirds; 26 Townsend’s warblers; and three white-throated sparrows.
For the third year in a row, the Western/Clark’s grebes won the prize of the highest number with 11,754, however, this total is the lowest number counted for these species in the last six years.
Other higher-than-usual numbers include 78 ring-necked ducks (high of 61 last year); 1,966 common mergansers (1,217 last year); eight brown creepers; and 507 red-winged blackbirds.
The overall picture shows lower counts for most species.
Species with lower-than-average numbers include the following 36 species: Gadwall, American widgeon, northern shoveler, green-winged teal, canvasback, greater and lesser scaup, bufflehead, ruddy duck, wild turkey, California quail, common loon, white-tailed kite, Cooper’s hawk, American kestrel, killdeer, spotted sandpiper, California gull, herring gull, mourning dove, Nuttall’s woodpecker, northern flicker, Steller's jay, California scrub-jay, oak titmouse, Bewick’s wren, American pipit, spotted towhee, California towhee, song sparrow, white and golden-crowned sparrows, western meadowlark, house finch, lesser goldfinch and house sparrow.
The Redbud Audubon Chapter said it appreciated all the participants and their support and efforts in making the bird count as accurate and complete as possible.
The group invites community members to join in the 121st annual Christmas Bird Count and the 46th Redbud Audubon Christmas Bird Count, which will be held Saturday, Dec. 19.
Kathy Barnwell is a member of the Redbud Audubon Society.
The Breakthrough Listen Initiative on Friday released data from the most comprehensive survey yet of radio emissions from the plane of the Milky Way Galaxy and the region around its central black hole, and it is inviting the public to search the data for signals from intelligent civilizations.
At a media briefing in Seattle as part of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or AAAS, Breakthrough Listen principal investigator Andrew Siemion of the University of California, Berkeley, announced the release of nearly two petabytes of data, the second data dump from the four-year old search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI.
A petabyte of radio and optical telescope data was released last June, the largest release of SETI data in the history of the field.
The data, most of it fresh from the telescope prior to detailed study from astronomers, comes from a survey of the radio spectrum between 1 and 12 gigahertz. About half of the data comes via the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia, which, because of its location in the Southern Hemisphere, is perfectly situated and instrumented to scan the entire galactic disk and galactic center.
The telescope is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility, owned and managed by the country’s national science agency, CSIRO.
The remainder of the data was recorded by the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, the world’s largest steerable radio dish, and an optical telescope called the Automated Planet Finder, built and operated by UC Berkeley and located at Lick Observatory outside San Jose, California.
“Since Breakthrough Listen’s initial data release last year, we have doubled what is available to the public,” said Breakthrough Listen’s lead system administrator, Matt Lebofsky. “It is our hope that these data sets will reveal something new and interesting, be it other intelligent life in the universe or an as-yet-undiscovered natural astronomical phenomenon.”
“For the whole of human history, we had a limited amount of data to search for life beyond Earth. So, all we could do was speculate. Now, as we are getting a lot of data, we can do real science and, with making this data available to the general public, so can anyone who wants to know the answer to this deep question,” said Yuri Milner, the founder of Breakthrough Listen.
Very Large Array joins SETI search
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory, or NRAO, and the privately-funded SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, also announced today an agreement to collaborate on new systems to add SETI capabilities to radio telescopes operated by NRAO.
The first project will develop a system to piggyback on the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, or VLA, in New Mexico and provide data to state-of-the-art digital backend equipment built by the SETI Institute.
"The SETI Institute will develop and install an interface on the VLA, permitting unprecedented access to the rich data stream continuously produced by the telescope as it scans the sky,“ said Siemion, who, in addition to his UC Berkeley position, is the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI at the SETI Institute. “This interface will allow us to conduct a powerful, wide-area SETI survey that will be vastly more complete than any previous such search."
"As the VLA conducts its usual scientific observations, this new system will allow for an additional and important use for the data we're already collecting," said NRAO Director Tony Beasley. “Determining whether we are alone in the universe as technologically capable life is among the most compelling questions in science, and NRAO telescopes can play a major role in answering it.”
Earth transit zone survey
In releasing the new radio and optical data, Siemion highlighted a new analysis of a small subset of the data: radio emissions from 20 nearby stars that are aligned with the plane of Earth’s orbit such that an advanced civilization around those stars could see Earth pass in front of the sun (a “transit” like those focused on by NASA’s Kepler space telescope).
Conducted by the Green Bank Telescope, the Earth transit zone survey observed in the radio frequency range between 4 and 8 gigahertz, the so-called C-band.
The data were then analyzed by former UC Berkeley undergraduate Sofia Sheikh, now a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University, who looked for bright emissions at a single radio wavelength or a narrow band around a single wavelength. She has submitted the paper to the Astrophysical Journal.
“This is a unique geometry,” Sheikh said. “It is how we discovered other exoplanets, so it kind of makes sense to extrapolate and say that that might be how other intelligent species find planets, as well. This region has been talked about before, but there has never been a targeted search of that region of the sky.”
While Sheikh and her team found no technosignatures of civilization, the analysis and other detailed studies the Breakthrough Listen group has conducted are gradually putting limits on the location and capabilities of advanced civilizations that may exist in our galaxy.
“We didn't find any aliens, but we are setting very rigorous limits on the presence of a technologically capable species, with data for the first time in the part of the radio spectrum between 4 and 8 gigahertz,” Siemion said. “These results put another rung on the ladder for the next person who comes along and wants to improve on the experiment.”
Sheikh noted that her mentor, Jason Wright at Penn State, estimated that if the world’s oceans represented every place and wavelength we could search for intelligent signals, we have, to date, explored only a hot tub’s worth of it.
“My search was sensitive enough to see a transmitter basically the same as the strongest transmitters we have on Earth, because I looked at nearby targets on purpose,” Sheikh said. “So, we know that there isn't anything as strong as our Arecibo telescope beaming something at us. Even though this is a very small project, we are starting to get at new frequencies and new areas of the sky.”
Beacons in the galactic center?
The so-far unanalyzed observations from the galactic disk and galactic center survey were a priority for Breakthrough Listen because of the higher likelihood of observing an artificial signal from that region of dense stars.
If artificial transmitters are not common in the galaxy, then searching for a strong transmitter among the billions of stars in the disk of our galaxy is the best strategy, Simeon said.
On the other hand, putting a powerful, intergalactic transmitter in the core of our galaxy, perhaps powered by the 4 million-solar-mass black hole there, might not be beyond the capabilities of a very advanced civilization. Galactic centers may be so-called Schelling points: likely places for civilizations to meet up or place beacons, given that they cannot communicate among themselves to agree on a location.
“The galactic center is the subject of a very specific and concerted campaign with all of our facilities because we are in unanimous agreement that that region is the most interesting part of the Milky Way galaxy,” Siemion said. “If an advanced civilization anywhere in the Milky Way wanted to put a beacon somewhere, getting back to the Schelling point idea, the galactic center would be a good place to do it. It is extraordinarily energetic, so one could imagine that if an advanced civilization wanted to harness a lot of energy, they might somehow use the supermassive black hole that is at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.”
Visit from an interstellar comet
Breakthrough Listen also released observations of the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov, which had a close encounter with the sun in December and is now on its way out of the solar system. The group had earlier scanned the interstellar rock ‘Oumuamua, which passed through the center of our solar system in 2017. Neither exhibited technosignatures.
“If interstellar travel is possible, which we don't know, and if other civilizations are out there, which we don't know, and if they are motivated to build an interstellar probe, then some fraction greater than zero of the objects that are out there are artificial interstellar devices,” said Steve Croft, a research astronomer with the Berkeley SETI Research Center and Breakthrough Listen. “Just as we do with our measurements of transmitters on extrasolar planets, we want to put a limit on what that number is.”
Regardless of the kind of SETI search, Siemion said, Breakthrough Listen looks for electromagnetic radiation that is consistent with a signal that we know technology produces, or some anticipated signal that technology could produce, and inconsistent with the background noise from natural astrophysical events. This also requires eliminating signals from cellphones, satellites, GPS, internet, Wi-fi and myriad other human sources.
In Sheikh’s case, she turned the Green Bank telescope on each star for five minutes, pointed away for another five minutes and repeated that twice more. She then threw out any signal that didn’t disappear when the telescope pointed away from the star. Ultimately, she whittled an initial 1 million radio spikes down to a couple hundred, which she was able to eliminate as Earth-based human interference. The last four unexplained signals turned out to be from passing satellites.
Siemion emphasized that the Breakthrough Listen team intends to analyze all the data released to date and to do it systematically and often.
“Of all the observations we have done, probably 20 percent or 30 percent have been included in a data analysis paper,” Siemion said. “Our goal is not just to analyze it 100 percent, but 1000 percent or 2000 percent. We want to analyze it iteratively.”
Breakthrough Listen, based at UC Berkeley, is supported by a $100 million, 10-year commitment from the Breakthrough Initiatives, founded in 2015 by Yuri and Julia Milner to explore the universe, seek scientific evidence of life beyond Earth and encourage public debate from a planetary perspective.
Robert Sanders writes for the UC Berkeley News Center.