Nothing like reading it from the man himself:
http://www.bigear.org/vol1no1/clarke.htm
The concept put forth in this essay is not original, and the idea that we should look for the products of “astronomical engineering” has been perhaps best expounded by Freeman Dyson. But nowhere as concisely as by Stanley Schmidt in his novel “The Sins of the Fathers” (Berkeley 1976), which contains the chilling phrase: “Seyfert galaxies are industrial accidents.”

Posted by ljk on 6/13/2005 8:06:24 AM In Reply to: the Aquila Gambit approaches… posted by Adam on 6/12/2005 11:26:22 PM
This regards the unusual number of novae observed in Aquila. This reminds me of something else unusual observed about Aquila:
Is the Universe Birefringent?
“To be more specific, we found that the rate of rotation depends on the angle between the direction of travel of the wave and a fixed direction in space, pointing approximately toward the constellation Sextans from Earth. The more parallel the direction of travel of the wave is with this fixed direction, the greater the rotation. The amount of rotation is also proportional to the distance of travel of the wave. These are the only two dependencies of the rotation.
“The curious effect is illustrated in the diagram above. In this diagram, Earth is at the center, and the direction toward Sextans is represented by a red “anisotropy axis.” The axis extends from Earth toward Sextans in one direction, and toward the constellation Aquila in the opposite direction. A plane-polarized radio wave emitted by Galaxy A (green) travels toward Earth in a direction almost parallel to the anisotropy axis (red). On the other hand, a plane-polarized radio wave emitted by Galaxy B (blue) approaches Earth in a direction almost perpendicular to the anisotropy axis.”
http://www.aip.org/png/html/birefrin.htm
Anisotropy in Electromagnetic Interactions.
http://www.rochester.edu/college/rtc/Borge/aniso.html
The validity of these anisotropy measurements was widely discounted, but I just don’t dig coincidences in Science.
But how could both be connected?

Bob Clark
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‘Axis of evil’ a cause for cosmic concern.
13 April 2007
Zeeya Merali
http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg19425994.000?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg19425994.000
This New Scientist article discusses two separate and independent indications the universe could have an axis of symmetry. One way this would be explained
for example would be if the universe had an axis of rotation.
The question is, is this the same axis proposed by Ralston and Nodland in their “birefringent universe”?

Bob Clark

This is the kind of work that is usually automated nowadays, using electronic versions of variable star catalogues.

Bob Clark