Russian radio astronomers reported about a week ago on the discovery of an unusual signal from a planet similar to the Sun, which is suspected to be a transmission from an intelligent civilization from one of the planets orbiting this planet. Follow-up observations revealed no evidence that the signal came from an artificial source in deep space but from a natural source, or from an Earth-made satellite that crossed the radio telescope's field of view
Has the story of the famous "wow" signal from 1977 repeated itself this week, which was initially suspected to be a signal from an intelligent civilization from outer space and turned out to be background noise.
At the end of last week, astronomer Paul Gilster published a post in which it was stated that a "strong signal" was received by Russian radio astronomers from an area around the star HD 164595, which is similar in size and structure to the Sun. The signal captured attention and two SETI observers rushed to make follow-up observations using the Allen Radio Telescope Array in California and the Boquete Optical Telescope watching the system.
However, Doug Vakuch, president of METI METI International (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) told Universe Today that the Elm telescope array did not detect any evidence of alien radio frequency technologies.
"The first step in tracking a SETI signal is to watch for the same wave frequency where the signal was first detected." says Vakuch. "Now it remains to search in other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum."
In the end, the SETI@Home team stated that they are not impressed by the article by the Russian radio astronomers. "Because the receivers were used to measure large bandwidths, there is nothing in the "signal" that would distinguish it from natural changes in radio frequencies such as starbursts (like our Sun), active galactic centers, micro dusting or background sources. Nor is there anything that can distinguish the signal from a radio signal from a satellite that has passed the telescope's field of view. Overall the topic is not interesting from the SETI point of view.
Veteran SETI person Seth Shostak was also skeptical in a post he published on the website, with a post about this event on the SETI website.
What sparked interest in the event in the first place was the fact that HD 164595 is very similar to the Sun, although slightly smaller. The age of the star is estimated to be about 6.3 billion seconds, and it is known to have at least one planet, HD 164595 b a Neptune-sized world orbiting it every 40 days.
If there was such a message, it was created 95 years ago, that is, in 1920 according to the Earth's calendar, long before the space age. In conclusion, Glister states: "No one claims that this is the action of an extraterrestrial intelligent civilization, but the system itself is worth further research.
For information on the Universe Today website
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I heard that the signal was at 11 gigahertz. What broadcast on earth operates at such a frequency. If there is then something that is not being told about and was discovered by mistake like they suspected in the B-2 planes that flew over Area 51 as UFOs.