Duncan Lunan - Alien Message

Alien Message

In 1973, in an article in Spaceflight, the magazine of the British Interplanetary Society (BIS), he said he had identified and deciphered a hidden radio message sent by an alien space probe that had been caught but overlooked in the late 1920s by a collaboration of Norwegian and Dutch researchers who were studying the long delayed echo effect. Published along with an accompanying editorial disclaimer, Lunan maintained that the putative message came from an object at the L5 point in the same orbit as the Moon, sent by the inhabitants of a planet orbiting Epsilon Boötis.

He came to the conclusion that the message was, "Start here. Our home is Upsilon Bootes, which is a double star. We live on the sixth planet of seven, coming from the sun, which is the larger of the two. Our sixth planet has one moon. Our fourth planet has three. Our first and third planets each have one. Our probe is in the position of Arcturus, known in our maps."

The claim was reported in Time and the CBS Evening News. It was included in Rod Serling's 1975 TV documentary In Search of Ancient Mysteries and, many years later, on George Noory's Coast to Coast AM radio show. The alleged message has been refuted and in 1976 Lunan withdrew the theory, presenting proofs against it and clarifying what had led him to formulate it. However, in 1998 he re-interpreted part of it, claiming support from positional astronomy.

The theory was part of the inspiration of Mark Brandis' 1974 novel Raumsonde Epsilon (in English Spaceprobe Epsilon).