SETI Team Investigating Mysterious Signal from Star 94 Light-Years Away!!!

[jimmy olsen]

Fist Proxima Centauri, and now this!

http://www.space.com/33893-seti-investigates-strong-candidate-signal.html

SETI Team Investigating Mysterious Signal from Star 94 Light-Years Away

By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer |  August 29, 2016 09:40pm ET

A powerful signal has been spotted coming from the vicinity of a sunlike star, and now astronomers are trying to figure out what it means.

In May 2015, researchers using a radio telescope in Russia detected a candidate SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) signal that seems to originate from HD 164595, a star system that lies about 94 light-years from Earth, the website Centauri Dreams reported over the weekend.


The astronomers have not yet published a study about the detection; they plan to discuss it next month at the 67th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Guadalajara, Mexico, according to Centauri Dreams' Paul Gilster, who wrote that one of the team members forwarded him the IAC presentation. [13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Alien Life


HD 164595 is known to harbor one planet — a roughly Neptune-mass world that orbits too close to the star to support life as we know it. However, it's possible that other worlds lurk undiscovered in the system, said astronomer Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, who is not part of the detection team.


The scientists who made the detection are respected researchers, and the signal is strong enough that it's probably not just random noise, Shostak told Space.com. Furthermore, the signal is consistent with something an alien civilization might send out — and if aliens did indeed do it, they are certainly far more advanced than we are, he added.

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. And they'd still have to produce more than 1 trillion watts if they beamed it only to Earth for some reason, Shostak said.

"The first number is hundreds of times more than all the sunlight falling on Earth," he said. "That's a very big energy bill." 

The SETI Institute focused the Allen Telescope Array (ATA), a system of radio dishes in Northern California, at HD 164595 Sunday night (Aug. 28) and plans to do so again tonight (Aug. 29), Shostak said. He certainly hopes the ATA finds something that would suggest ET is behind the signal, but he said he suspects there's a more prosaic explanation.

For example, it's possible that interference by an Earth-orbiting satellite or something else close to home is responsible, Shostak said. Indeed, he said that such "terrestrial interference" would be his bet, if we ever do learn what caused the signal.

But, sadly, it's very possible that we'll never know. The Russia-based team apparently observed the HD 164595 system 39 different times and only detected the signal once, Shostak said. If nobody sees it again, it will probably remain a mystery, much like the famous "Wow!" signal of 1977.

"Without a confirmation of this signal, we can only say that it's 'interesting,'" Shostak wrote today in a blog post about the candidate signal detection

[CountDeMoney]

We already know what it is going to say: "I declare the games in Berlin on the occasion of the first Olympics of the new era to be open."

All hail Galactic Imperator First Consul Trump.

[Tonitrus]

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. And they'd still have to produce more than 1 trillion watts if they beamed it only to Earth for some reason, Shostak said.

"The first number is hundreds of times more than all the sunlight falling on Earth," he said. "That's a very big energy bill."

But, sadly, it's very possible that we'll never know. The Russia-based team apparently observed the HD 164595 system 39 different times and only detected the signal once, 

Something probably exploded.  Or they crossed the streams.

[Monoriu]

The scientists who made the detection are respected researchers, and the signal is strong enough that it's probably not just random noise, Shostak told Space.com. Furthermore, the signal is consistent with something an alien civilization might send out — and if aliens did indeed do it, they are certainly far more advanced than we are, he added.

I am beginning to think it may not be such a great idea to look for aliens.  If we are the native Americans of this universe, it doesn't make sense to tell the much more advanced Europeans that we are out here...

[CountDeMoney]

Chinese and their hangups with European exploitation. 

[Eddie Teach]

I'm with mono. No reason the destruction or enslavement of humanity needs to happen while I'm Alive.

[Martinus]

Fist Proxima Centauri

That's one fucking weird fetish.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Fist Proxima Centauri

That's one fucking weird fetish.

Somehow less weirder than My LIttle Pony.

[Caliga]

Tim: relax.

[Ed Anger]

Fist Proxima Centauri

That's one fucking weird fetish.

Somehow less weirder than My LIttle Pony.

Pinkie Pie is best pony.

[mongers]

Tim: relax.

Yeah, sorry about that, but it was me trying to mend the microwave oven. 

[Legbiter]

Fist Proxima Centauri

That's one fucking weird fetish.

Somehow less weirder than My LIttle Pony.

Pinkie Pie is best pony.

Now available on Amazon. 

[Ed Anger]

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

"Baffling" "signal" "from HD 164595" is probably none of the above.

I'm sure that many of you have seen the news reports of a "SETI signal" detected from the star HD 164595

I was one of the many people who received the the email with the subject "Candidate SETI SIGNAL DETECTED by Russians from star HD 164595 by virtue of RATAN-600 radio telescope." Since the email did come from known SETI researchers, I looked over the presentation. I was unimpressed. In one out of 39 scans that passed over star showed a signal at about 4.5 times the mean noise power with a profile somewhat like the beam profile. Of course SETI@home has seen millions of potential signals with similar characteristics, but it takes more than that to make a good candidate. Multiple detections are a minimum criterion.

Because the receivers used were making broad band measurements, there's really nothing about this "signal" that would distinguish it from a natural radio transient (stellar flare, active galactic nucleus, microlensing of a background source, etc.) There's also nothing that could distinguish it from a satellite passing through the telescope field of view. All in all, it's relatively uninteresting from a SETI standpoint.

But, of course, it's been announced to the media. Reporters won't have the background to know it's not interesting. Because the media has it, and since this business runs on media, everyone will look at it. ATA is looking at it. I assume Breakthrough will look at it. Someone will look at it with Arecibo, and we'll be along for the ride. And I'll check the SETI@home database around that position. And we'll all find nothing. It's not our first time at this rodeo, so we know how it works.

[Caliga]

Sorry but Tim has spoken.  It's fucking aliens, dude.