Did Russian Astronomers Detect Alien Intelligent Life?

August 30, 2016

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August 30, 2016 – On May 15th this year Russian astronomers operating the RATAN-600 radio telescope (seen below) detected a signal originating from a star system with known planets some 94 light-years away. The system goes by the name HD 164595. One Neptune-sized planet has so far been detected circling in close orbit to the star. Deemed unhinhabitable it would be unlikely that this is the origin of the detected signal. More likely if it is coming from an alien intelligence its origin is a yet undiscovered planet circling the star.

The recorded signal appears below. Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer of the SETI Institute describes the observations made by the radio telescope as not ideal because the receiver’s bandwidth is a billion times wider than that traditionally used for SETI searches. (If unfamiliar with the term SETI, it stands for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.) Why not ideal? Because the power needed to produce such a signal would be enormous, equivalent to 100 billion billion watts which is more than the energy from the Sun falling on Earth. The other anomaly in the signal is its frequency band, 11 Ghz, traditionally a radio spectrum used here on Earth by the military. It, therefore, may be of terrestrial origin. So far the SETI Allen Telescope Array has failed to duplicate the result.