Not even the Russians, who first detected this signal over a year ago, think this is an alien signal.
Here is what the director of SETI had to say about the signal.
A supposed "signal" coming from a star about 95 light years away from Earth is probably not being generated by space aliens, but that hasn't stopped readers some from getting excited at the possibility.
The signal originates from a star known as HD 164595. The star is located in the Hercules constellation and has at least one known planet that orbits in a 40-day cycle. But Eric Korpela, director of the Berkeley SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Research Center is not impressed with the findings:
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
[email protected] 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.
In an e-mail, Korpela told us that "It is possible that this could be a signal from an alien civilization. But it is incredibly unlikely."
According to science journalist Dave Mosher, the signal is indeed so uninteresting that the people who first found it didn't bother to let anyone know right away. The researchers found it using the RATAN-600 radio telescope located in Zelenchukskaya, in southwest Russia, more than a year ago.
Korpela additionally explained to us that:
We tend to categorize signals on several criteria when determining whether a signal is extraterrestrial and indicates non-terrestrial intelligence.
1. Is the signal of a type that would indicate intelligence (narrow band, pulsed, encoded with changes in amplitude, period, or frequency over time) rather than a natural radiation source? There is no way to tell because the signal has no frequency, bandwidth or temporal information, Since there are natural sources with time variable power in this band, the standard assumption is that the source is natural and broad band. At best the parameters of the signal are ill defined.
2. Is the source at persistent location in celestial coordinates? Since the source was only seen once out of 39 observations, there is no way to tell. This is consistent with a natural variable source of radio emission.
3. Is the source not present at other locations in the sky, which would indicate a local or earth orbiting radio source? Again, this is not possible to tell because the signal is not well specified. There are multiple source of potential interference in this band including satellites and ground based radars reflecting off of aircraft or satellites.
4. Is the source frequency significantly far away from known interference frequencies? There is no way to know from the signal properties we know.
We would require a "yes" to all four of those questions before considering a signal to be interesting, then we would observe it again ourselves, and only then would we ask for confirmation from another astronomer. Following confirmation we would proceed with the post detection protocols.
The scientific skepticism hasn't stopped some publications from asking if this was the discovery of contact that would change everything, a la Star Trek. Most likely it is not, at least not this time. But that won't stop researchers from keeping their eyes on the skies in hopes of finding extraterrestrial intelligence.
It stirs the imagination when stories like this emerge, but remember funding increases with PR.