No alien signal, says SETI astronomerA strong signal from a sunlike star sparked speculation this week that we might – at last – have heard from an alien civilization. Now astronomers say … no.
You might have read the stories this week about Russian astronomers detecting a possible “signal” from a star 94 light-years from Earth. The signal from sunlike star HD 164595 – said to be a very strong signal – spawned a flurry of speculation that, maybe, perhaps, at last, we’ve heard a signal from an alien civilization. In the video above, though, Seth Soshak of the SETI Institute says the signal has now been identified as being from a Russian military satellite. Astronomer Yulia Sotnikova wrote in an update published today – August 31, 2016 – by the Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences:
Like many other stars in our Milky Way galaxy, the star HD 164595 looked promising as an abode for alien life. Italian astronomer Claudio Maccone and others had described it as:
What did SETI astronomers think the signal might be? If the signal had been artificial, its strength suggested that it came from an advanced civilization, at least a Type II on the Kardashev scale, which astronomers have been talking about and speculating about for decades. The Kardashev scale – originally designed in 1964 by the Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev – is a lot of fun to think about. It’s a way of imagining a civilization’s level of technological advancement, based on the amount of energy it’s able to harness. We humans on Earth, for example, represent a Type I civilization – sometimes called planetary civilization. We have the technology to use and store energy from our sun that strikes our world’s surface, or nearby space. A Type II civilization can do much more. It has the capability to harness the energy of the entire star. The device used to do this is called a Dyson sphere. It’s basically a big sphere built around a star that can capture its energy. Read more about Dyson spheres here. As early as yesterday, those with technical backgrounds were already urging caution on the idea that the signal apparently from HD 164595 was a sign of aliens. On the website SETI@home, someone (apparently an astronomer) commented:
And so it is a satellite. To all SETI astronomers: keep searching! Bottom line: A strong signal from sunlike star HD 164595 sparked a flurry of speculation this week that we have – at last – heard from an alien civilization. Now astronomers say the signal was from a military satellite.
http://earthsky.org/space/hd-164595-signal-alien-civilization-seti |