The Jar on the Boundary Pin and the Signal That Shouldn't Exist

The Jar on the Boundary Pin and the Signal That Shouldn't Exist

A sealed mason jar propped against an iron boundary pin in eastern New Mexico held a typed sequence of numbers no one recognized, while an inexplicable narrow-band radio signal near 1.4 GHz-the protected hydrogen line-bled into an optical observatory’s photometric feed; how did a jar on a county desk link to a transmitter that should not have existed? What was sending a deliberate, repeating pattern from the Solano Flats, and why was the jar found eleven miles west of that direction days later?

In this episode, we follow the timeline from a county surveyor finding a sealed jar beside a boundary stake to an observatory operator detecting structured interference in the hydrogen line and university staff triangulating its source, asking how those discoveries connected and what remained unexplained.

Person: Paul Armstrong Person: Lauren Novak Person: Connor Marsh Date: November 4, 2011 Location: Solano Flats, eastern New Mexico

- Paul Armstrong found a sealed mason jar standing upright beside an iron boundary pin on the morning of November 4, 2011. - Connor Marsh was running a photometric survey of 47 variable stars when he noticed a repeating narrow-band pattern around 1.4 GHz. - The interference appeared during a survey that started at 2:47 AM and was scheduled to run six hours. - Bernard Cho triangulated the signal west-northwest to the Solano Flats, about 11 miles east of the Cerro Caliente Observatory. - Lauren Novak found three circular tripod impressions in frost-hardened ground arranged in an equilateral triangle with sides of about 18 inches.

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