Scientists Looking For Alien Life Investigate ‘Interesting’ Signal From Space

“Strong signals”, potentially linked to alien life, have been picked up by a radio telescope operating in a remote corner of Russian Federation.

But the discovery was kept secret from the global community until it emerged in a research paper announcing a “strong signal in the direction of HD164595”, which is the star’s designation.

On the outskirts of the Russian mountain village of Zelenchukskaya, there is a radio telescope called RATAN-600, which is designed for a very specific purpose-to detect signs of extraterrestrial life.

The star has been identified as HD164595, located in the constellation Hercules. “If it were a narrow beam signal focused on our Solar System, it would be of a power available to a Kardashev Type I civilisation”, he said.

Of course, like any other signal, such as the recent study of the dimming light curve of KIC 8462852 (Tabby’s Star) that is still being researched, it is possible the signal comes from other “natural” events such microlensing of a background source or even comets as been proposed for both Tabby’s Star or the “Wow!”

However, astronomers think that if there really is a planet that orbits closer to its star than Mercury orbits the Sun, the star would be too hot to support life. As such, it should be permanently monitored by Seti scientists to see whether more can be learned about the star and its planet, they said. Either we’re listening to some odd bounceback of a secret military signal (which, if true, likely wouldn’t invite anybody to claim it, so that’s anybody’s guess), or we’re sitting right at the beginning of a sci-fi movie. The finding is set to be discussed at a meeting of the IAA SETI Permanent Committee on September 27, 2016. “The phone has been ringing all morning”, said Dr. Seth Shostak, Ph.D., of the SETI Institute.

The signal was discovered by the Russian Academy of Science in May of past year, but researchers didn’t really make a big deal of it. If the transmission was being aimed just at us, it would need a similar amount of energy to that used by all humankind. But if the signal were sent from alien life in the HD 164595 system, what would that mean? This signal is probably nothing, as are pretty much all the other candidate signals astronomers have come across since we started looking, but the best way to find something this unlikely is to be willing to look through lots and lots of nothing until you finally find what you’re looking for. And it wasn’t until last weekend that the report came into the public eye.

Despite the doubts, all reasonable possibilities should be checked out, Shostak said.

Has this Russian radio telescope detected a signal from an advanced extraterrestrial civilization? Perhaps last night, they simply weren’t broadcasting at the same frequency we initially detected. “I would follow it if I were the astronomers, but I would also not hype the fact that it may be at SETI signal given the significant chance it could be something military”.