Centauri Dreams website author Paul Gilster reveals that the signal detected by the Ratan-600 radio telescope in Zelenchukskaya in Russian Federation came from the direction of HD164595.
Advertisement
This system is known to have one planet, a Neptune-sized world in a very tight orbit, making it unattractive for life. The researchers do not exclude the possibility that the star might harbor other planets that remained undiscovered so far.
They say a star around 94 light years from earth is emitting a very strong radio signal.
Stargazers involved in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) have trained their telescopes on a star called HD 164595, which appears to be the source of the unexplained signal. That suggests they were not persuaded this was extraterrestrial life reaching out, he says. A slide presentation on the research was also sent out to members of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA)’s SETI Permanent Committee.
Scientific American paraphrased Shostak as saying, “the signal is strong enough that it’s probably not just random noise”.
The equipment the researchers used can’t determine whether the radio signal is broad or narrow band, which is important because natural sources of radio emission (of which there are many) tend to be broad.
Researchers say that, “based on the received signal’s characteristics, aliens would have to generate about 100 billion billion watts of energy to blast it out in all directions”, said Fox News.
“But of course, that’s not necessarily the case”, posted Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI institute. That means they would have harnessed the full energy output of HD 164595.
Scientists speculate that the transmission could be from a technically proficient society. I will report back only after it’s been confirmed that these life forms have intentions to mercy kill all of us.
The baffling “alien” broadcast was first picked up by the Ratan-600 telescope in Zelenchukskaya, Russia in May 2015 but was kept under wraps until now.
Most likely, the radio signal was caused by terrestrial interference or a satellite, a common occurrence, Shostak told Reuters. In fact, most astronomers seem confused about why the signal is in the news.
“The chance that this is truly a signal from extraterrestrials is not terribly promising, and the discoverers themselves apparently doubt that they’ve found ET”, Shostak said.
That hasn’t yet happened with this signal, but organizations like the SETI Institute and METI International are now doing what they can in terms of following standard protocol on an interesting data point, and conducting their own follow-up observations of HD164595 with their own radio equipment.
Advertisement
The only indication was that the signal could have come from the constellation Sagittarius.
