Have astronomers found an alien signal?

A group of Russian astronomers have detected a signal from a star system 94 light years away that has many people talking about aliens.

Astronomers detected the signal on May 15, 2015, using the RATAN-600 radio telescope in Zelenchukskaya, Russia. It was announced to the public over the weekend.

The signal is coming from HD 164595, a system with a star a few billion years older than our own sun. The system is known to have one planet, though more can’t be ruled out.

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Though the signal is one that fits the profile for an intentional transmission, there are other possibilities, such as radio interference from Earth or interference from the star itself.

The SETI Institute, which searches for extraterrestrial intelligence and signals such as this one, isn’t completely convinced. The receiver used a bandwidth that is a billion times stronger than what is usually used for SETI, said Seth Shostak, senior astronomer with SETI on their site. Shostak also writes that the radio telescope itself is of “unusual design” which could be problematic in this discovery.

Then there’s the signal itself. Shostak says the signal itself was weak, but that could be due to the distance of the system.

In order for an alien civilization to send out a signal received by Earth, they’d have to do one of two things: use a directed beam or have a beam that was going out in all directions. A multi-directional beam would require power that is 10²⁰ watts, equivalent to 100 billion watts. Shostak writes that that is “more energy than all the sunlight falling on Earth.”

As for a directed beam, that would require more than a trillion watts, “comparable to the total energy consumption of all humankind.”

While these requirements are far beyond our capabilities, that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible.

“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,” writes Shostak. “Nonetheless, one should check out all reasonable possibilities, given the importance of the subject.”

And that’s just what SETI plans to do. On the evening of August 28, astronomers there turned the Allen Telescope Array toward HD164595. As of this writing, they have not yet detected any signal. However, they have not yet covered all the frequencies.

It’s important to note, as well, that the signal was only ever detected once and the Russian astronomers did not follow protocol to ask other observatories elsewhere to confirm their findings.

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