And now for something completely different...possible signal from alien life.

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**BigWaaagh**

Just saw this. "Possible" in BIG italics of course, but possible, nonetheless.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/alien-life-or-noise-russian-telescope-detects-strong-signal-from-sun-like-star/ar-AAie1dR?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=ASUDHP

**Jehan-reznor**

So where is the link to the signal/

**curran12**

Headline grabbing, but really nothing confirmed. It's interesting to be sure, but hopefully people don't lose their heads over this.

**Steve steveson**

Source without shady redirects?

**Easy E**

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/30/491924071/scientists-looking-for-alien-life-investigate-interesting-signal-from-space

Try looking here.

hey aren't saying it's alien, but they are saying it's "interesting."

The SETI Institute — the private organization that looks for signals of extraterrestrial life — has announced that it is investigating reports of an unusual radio signal picked up by Russian astronomers.

The signal was detected on a much wider bandwidth than the SETI Institute uses in its searches, and the strength of the received signal was "weak," SETI Institute astronomer Seth Shostak wrote in a blog post.

It was unusual, both in its design and its "beam shape," he says.

The signal might be coming from a solar system called HD 164595, some 94 light-years away from us, Shostak wrote. It seems to be coming from that direction, at any rate.

That system has a star similar to our sun. There's one known planet circling that star, about the size of Neptune and very close to the star. That planet doesn't seem like a good candidate for hosting life, but other planets might also be in the system, Shostak wrote.

But there's no guarantee that the signal is, in fact, coming from the system. And even if it is, that doesn't mean it's definitely coming from intelligent life-forms.

Astronomer Nick Suntzeff told Ars Technica that there's a "significant chance" it could be military — that is, coming from covert satellite communications instead of beaming to us from HD 164595.

And there are "natural sources" that could conceivably cause a wide-band signal like the one detected, Shostak told GeekWire.

Even the astronomers who first detected the signal, in May 2015, didn't immediately alert the scientific community and ask for help confirming the signal. That suggests they were not persuaded this was extraterrestrial life reaching out, he says.

And Shostak wrote on SETI's site that it's "not terribly promising" that this is a message from alien life-forms.

To put things in perspective, Eric Korpela, an astronomer at Berkeley who is a project scientist for the SETI@home project, notes that there are millions of "potential signals" that have been detected from space, and that this signal was detected only once out of 39 scans. "I was unimpressed," he wrote on a SETI forum.

So now is not the time for either delight or panic, depending on your feelings about encountering alien life-forms.

But it is time for more investigation, Shostak says. The SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array in California has been turned toward HD 164595 since Sunday evening, looking for a repeat of the signal.

You might remember that in 1977, astronomers detected the "Wow" signal, an odd burst that might, possibly, have been sent by alien life-forms. But it has never been detected again, leaving scientists with little to work with.

If things are different this time around and one of the arrays finds a repeat of the new signal, that would "immediately spur" follow-up research, Shostak writes.

In the meantime, it has prompted speculation.

Again, astronomers are cautioning that this might easily be a false alarm. But if the signal were sent from alien life in the HD 164595 system, what would that mean? There are two primary options, Shostak says.

One scenario is that the life-forms sent a powerful signal in all directions — a "here I am" sent to the universe in general. To reach us at its current strength, that would mean the planet had access to 100 billion billion watts of energy, "hundreds of times more energy than all the sunlight falling on Earth," Shostak wrote, indicating a very advanced alien society, with capabilities far beyond ours.

Alternately, the message could have been directed at us. That's a lower energy requirement — about equal to "the total energy consumption of all mankind."

But in that case, they'd have to know we're here. The system is too far away to have picked up any TV or radar from humans on Earth, "and it's hard to understand why anyone would want to target our solar system," Shostak says.

**feeder**

Wow! signal for the millenials?

**A Town Called Malus**

Update on this but just read in Physics World that this was found with follow up measurements to just be terrestrial interference.

No aliens yet guys but keep looking!

**Iron_Captain**

It was detected by a Russian telescope, so just the fact that this story came out means it was no alien signal. If it had actually been a possible alien signal, the information would still be locked in a secure vault somewhere deep underneath the Kremlin.

**Orlanth**

We had something like this before in the 30's from the anomalous but regular electonic 'LGM' signals, a tongue in cheek reference meaning 'little green men', which were later identified and understood as pulsars.

If the signal starts broadcasting prime numbers it will get interesting, if it is another radio-like signal, as LGM was, it will still be interesting , but for different reasons.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Iron_Captain wrote:
It was detected by a Russian telescope, so just the fact that this story came out means it was no alien signal. If it had actually been a possible alien signal, the information would still be locked in a secure vault somewhere deep underneath the Kremlin.

You sure. Astronomy is globally connected research and replies very heavily on peer review and amateur cooperation, most eyes on the sky are amateur, and efven now a very large percentage of new discoveries are reported by amateurs first.. Putin is no slouch on internal security, but by the time the government knew about this the info was likely shared with the astronomy community anyway.
Phenomena are named after the first three people, or teams to detect it, which encourages things to be shared quickly. Its also a study very heavily connected to the internet. Putin is sharp but would have to be a lot sharper to shut down this sort of news quickly enough to do so properly. He could choose to take Russian space science offline, but I doubt it would profit him to do so.

If there is anything out there, there is no small chance it will be discovered first by the vast network of amateur astronomers who can cover far more of the sky than professional astronomy can do, and news will spread as fast as the internet does. As any discovery will include a set of coordinates, and frequencies if radio astronomy is used, for further observation, so any actual discovery will be near impossible to supress once this is published.

As a number of phenomena are fleeting, such as supernovae, as well as the bragging rights of first discovery being potentially lost, trying to add a delay for official review wont practically work either.

**Ouze**

feeder wrote:
Wow! signal for the millenials?

Side note, they think the conditions to recreate the Wow! signal might recur in January 2017 and are set to track it. Interesting project.

**TheCustomLime**

A Town Called Malus wrote:
Update on this but just read in Physics World that this was found with follow up measurements to just be terrestrial interference.

No aliens yet guys but keep looking!

And once more we can thank nerds for making space boring.

**Avatar 720**

curran12 wrote:
hopefully people don't lose their heads over this.

Too late, man. They're already taking our heads, man. People are losing their heads to aliens all the time, man, and the Government turns a blind eye because they get cool alien bribes.

You didn't hear this from me though, man. I like my head where it is, man; ain't no little green man gonna steal my thoughts!

**A Town Called Malus**

TheCustomLime wrote:
A Town Called Malus wrote:
Update on this but just read in Physics World that this was found with follow up measurements to just be terrestrial interference.

No aliens yet guys but keep looking!

And once more we can thank nerds for making space boring.

If you need aliens to make space interesting then you're looking at it wrong

**TheCustomLime**

A Town Called Malus wrote:
TheCustomLime wrote:
A Town Called Malus wrote:
Update on this but just read in Physics World that this was found with follow up measurements to just be terrestrial interference.

No aliens yet guys but keep looking!

And once more we can thank nerds for making space boring.

If you need aliens to make space interesting then you're looking at it wrong

No one watched Star Trek for the scenes where Kirk and Spock discuss at length the possibility of a super black hole at the center of the galaxy while Kirk is at a whiteboard drawing lengthy formulas. Just saying.

**Easy E**

IIRC this turned out to just be an intercepted transmission from a Russian spy satellite or something terrestrial like that.