The energy surge caught the Russian radio telescope, may be nothing more than a satellite, passed overhead, or a General glitch in the software. If you didn’t know, last week, the Internet held its breath: scientists said that it has received the strongest signal from space. That is, the aliens are trying to contact us? Probably not. Will have to disappoint you.
It all started quite innocent and carefree, with carefully articulated notes in a blog published last Saturday by the distinguished science journalist Paul Hillstrom. Gilster wrote about the message he received from some SETI researchers (who are engaged in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence): they reported a 3-second flash of radio waves from the stars less than 100 light-years from Earth. The researchers, headed by Mykola Borovym of the Russian Academy of Sciences does not rule out the possibility that the signal was artificial, and intrigued enough to do “permanent monitoring” of the stars.
Message Gilster triggered a storm of sensationalism and big headlines in the news. Very soon they will end, as usually end this kind of story.
Here’s what happened: in may 2015 the radio telescope RATAN-600 in Zelenchukskaya, Russia, recorded the signal from HD 164595, star 94 light years from Earth in the constellation of Hercules. This star is very similar to our Sun, though slightly older, with a supposed age of 6.3 billion years. She has at least one known planet, unsuitable for life, “Neptune” world; however, the system could exist other planets, more pleasant life.
If the signal is really artificial and comes from HD 164595, its energy source must be gigantic. According to Seth Shostak, an astronomer from the SETI Institute in California, who was not involved in the study, radiospire sent in all directions by a hypothetical alien civilization, would require hundreds of times more energy than comes to the Earth with the sun. Unless, of course, radiospire will be similar to that found Russian telescope (after all, we see only a small part of the total energy).
If instead, the beam will be focused solely on Land, such a signal will still take two times more electricity than the US consumes in a year. Obviously if it’s a galactic civilization, it is much more developed than ours.
But the trouble is that there is no reason to believe that this signal was created by aliens — and never has been, says Eric pored, astronomer, University of California at Berkeley. Pored runs SETI@Home, a citizen science initiative, which processes data with the help of home computers; blog SETI@Home pored wrote that after assessing the available evidence, he was “disappointed” and data was “relatively uninteresting”.
“SETI@home was seen by millions of potential signals with similar characteristics, but that they were good candidates, you need a lot more. A number of discoveries — minimal criterion.”
And this Russian telescope not found. The estimated signal appeared only one time out of thirty-nine, when the telescope RATAN-600 were scanned, and the scans themselves were conducted in such a way that it is impossible to exclude false signals. This signal could be the flash of the target stars, belch of a supermassive black hole or even a random increase in the usual radiospace any backdrop of stars, or the rippling of the interstellar plasma.
It boils down to is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence — evidence that is very difficult to obtain in the framework of modern programs SETI. Contrary to Hollywood notions, SETI has meager budgets that allow for infrequent monitoring of small sections of the sky in narrow ranges of bandwidth. Can this new signal HD 164595 to be a genuine transfer of space civilization? Of course, it can. Like millions of other curious optical bursts and radio bursts, which are available in the archives of SETI. This happened before (remember the signal Wow! from 1977 and is still as fruitless attempts to see this signal a second time, spanning decades.
Even if we assume that the time allotted for work with the telescope, it would be unlimited (but it is limited and very), each program of search for extraterrestrial intelligence on Earth, most likely, be ruined, trying to observe each of the millions of potential candidates and giving them proper attention and care, and any signal Wow! you don’t deserve. In the context of limited resources, attention should be paid to only the best and credible signals, and pored not sure that the HD signal 164595 crossed this threshold.
The problem is that while the media frenzied about asserting HD 164595, there are no opportunities to take and to spend the precious time of the telescope to look for other signals from HD 164595. That takes money and people’s attention. Ignore the signal, which draws attention, and is clearly not an option, even if this signal will show nothing.
According to Shostak, Arenovski an array of telescopes already watching this star, but don’t see anything peculiar. The Breakthrough Lister project, a private initiative, financed by Yuri Milner, also published its research results HD 164595. You know the result: nothing.
More interesting, a statistical analysis of available data showed that if such a signal was produced by natural astrophysical sources, one would expect that previous studies have seen such strong signals in other areas of the sky. This implies that either the team of RATAN-600 are very lucky to find this source in their observations, or the signal due to local interference or a matter of calibration. That is, if the aliens move aside, even astrophysical source of such a signal will be suspicious — a much more probable explanation of the signal will be the passage of the satellite overhead, or some program crashes.
American astronomer Nick Sunzi believes that the source of the signal detected at the wavelength of 2.7 cm, which corresponds to a frequency of approximately 11 GHz, can be military transmitters. “God knows who or what is broadcasting at 11 GHz,” he said. — There is a significant chance that it could be something military.”
Periodically, the team Breakthrough Listen will come back and “visit” HD 164595 in the future, hoping to repeat the signal. Other programs of SETI, no doubt, will do the same. As you should. But let’s not fool ourselves: we just wishful thinking.
[Updated]: while writing this article, came accurate information about the source signal. It turned out that the adopted radio signal from the star G-type is located at 94.4 light-years away in the constellation Hercules is a signal to a military satellite during the cold war.
