4RV Authors, Artists, and Editors Awarded

 Among other things, I write books for children. I have five published books with three more in the works at my publisher, 4RV Publishing. The name has nothing to do with recreational vehicles. When the publisher/president started the company, she used the initials of the members of her family: four R’s and a V. You can see all the books (including mine!) and authors at 4RVPublishing.com.

 

 Every year, www.critters.org publishes the Critters Readers Poll on the best in writing for the previous year. Formerly known as “Predators and Editors,” this poll has been published for 25 years. Readers vote on their favorites in forty-five categories including twenty-five genres of novels and short stories, artists, covers, online bookstores, and other areas related to publishing. The most recent winners and runners-up can be found at http://critters.org/predpoll/final_tally.ht.

 This year, 4RV books and editors won several awards, including two First Place awards, six Second Place awards, and one Sixth Place award.

These awards demonstrate the excellence of this small press publisher and care with which the publisher’s president, Vivian Zabel (the “V” in 4RV) selects the editors and the books they publish.

 Congratulations to Cheryl Malandrinos, Jeanne Conway, Vivian Zabel, D. K. Davenport,  Shawn Simon, Rita Durrett and 4RV Publishing!

Alien Signals? Likely Not, But the Most Exciting Possibility Yet!

      Earth is a noisy planet. Not with sound waves, which never leave the atmosphere, but with all sorts of radio noise. Between radar beams from weather monitoring stations, airports and military use, TV and radio signals, and even deliberate attempts by astronomers to send messages to any listening aliens, our planet constantly announces its presence to the universe at large.

Because we are so radio noisy, astronomers have for decades tried to find such radio signals emanating from any other existing alien civilizations in our Milky Way, with little success. In 1977, astronomers performing such a search with a giant radio telescope run by Ohio State University detected a signal, a powerful radio burst, dubbed the “WOW!” signal. It never appeared again despite much searching.

In 2015, billionaire Yuri Milner donated $100M to create a program designed to search for extraterrestrial radio signals, the Breakthrough Listen Project. The project uses the Parke Radio Telescope in Australia, operated by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.

 Recently, news broke that the project detected a narrowly-focused beam of 980 MHz radio waves detected in April and May 2019. The signal came from the direction of our nearest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri, which has two planets orbiting it, and one is Earthlike. That frequency is important because human-made craft and satellites typically don’t use it, lending credence to the possibility of it coming from an alien civilization.

Parke Radio Telescope, credit Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization

The powerful burst excited astronomers of the project. Sofia Sheikh, an astronomer at Penn State University, led the analysis of the signal. While the team has yet to release its full report, Scientific American interviewed Sheikh. She said, "It's the most exciting signal that we've found in the Breakthrough Listen project because we haven't had a signal jump through this many of our filters before.”

No repeat signal has been detected, and the team still must rule any natural signals, such as a distant comet or some other astronomical. But astronomers excitedly await the full report. We may have finally discovered that we have neighbors.

 

    Each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper. On the following day, I post that same column to my blog page.

    This is reprinted by permission from the Oklahoman and www.newsok.com.