> Comet 266P/Christensen will pass the Chi Sagittarii star group again on 25 January 2017, while 335P/Gibbs will make its passage on 7 January 2018. Paris plans to observe these events to look for a recurrence of the mystery signal. But time is not on his side for using an existing radio telescope – they are all booked out.
Can someone explain why he needs to observe them when they're passing in front of those particular stars?
From the comments on the Guardian site, user bllckchps estimates the needed amount of stuff in the comet to produce the signal:
"Of course, most of the mass is in the nucleus, and will be in molecular form, unobservable at 1.4GHz. Let's be generous, and allow the comet to be made purely of water ice (H20) which will dissociate into a neutral hydrogen (H) and a hydroxyl (OH) as it goes into the halo, meaning that ~1/18 of the mass can be H.
We're already about a factor of 20 too low to explain the Wow signal, and now here's another factor of ~20. What fraction of the total mass is in the halo? Generously, maybe ~1%? So it's about a factor of 40000 too weak to be a plausible model."
The same user, regarding Antonio Paris, the person who collects the money:
"The web page for his Center for Planetary Science is pretty much just a collection of stuff taken verbatim from wikipedia. And his twitter feed is mostly a collection of uncredited images taken from whoever/wherever, interspersed with exhortations to send him cash for this ridiculous project.
If you follow up the various programmes he has been "involved" in (candidate astronaut etc) you will see that they are distinctly less impressive than they might at first seem to the naive. "
Fascinatingly, according to Antonio Paris' LinkedIn profile, he got a Master degree in 2012 and immediately started to refer to himself as "Professor Paris" in the "Area 51" documentary directed by... himself!
"> But time is not on his side for using an existing radio telescope – they are all booked out.
That is not true. There are several major facilities for which observations in January 2017 can still be applied for, and there is not a single one for which you can even yet apply for observations in January 2018. If his idea was good enough, he could submit it to the normal telescope time allocation committees. It looks like he himself knows it's not. And there is not even any reason to wait for the comets to be in a particular part of the sky. Just observe them, or any other comet, at any time, to see if they emit at that frequency."
Can someone explain why he needs to observe them when they're passing in front of those particular stars?