Astronomers Picked Up Strong Radio Signal In Space, Could This Be An Alien Detection?

A group of Russian astronomers claimed they picked up a strong mysterious signal from space. They said that the signal came from a distant system with a Sun-like star. However, before you start thinking that these astronomers may have found ET's home, they still need to find another signal coming from the same location in the sky.

The astronomers used the RATAN-600 radio telescope which is a large radio observatory in Zelenchukskaya, located in southwestern Russia. The data they collected showed that the signal came from the direction of a star known as HD164595 which is located 95 light-years from Earth. What the astronomers found really interesting though is since the star is almost the size of the Sun, it is believed to have a planet in its orbit, techninja.me reported.

However, astronomers think that if there really is a planet that orbits closer to its star than Mercury orbits the Sun, the star would be too hot to support life. However, it is still possible that there are other planets in there that experts haven't discovered yet.

Seth Shostak, the director for the Center for SETI Study, warned people to contain their excitement about the discovery. There are a number of probable explanations for what triggered the detection, and according to the astronomers, until another signal is picked up from the exact same location in the sky, no one can cry "alien" just yet. There have also been several times that this same signal had been picked up before but no one has really made out of it. "I would say it's a secret signal, but secret alerts are not new," Shostak explained to The Verge.

Shostak also said that it took the research group more than a year to say anything about the signal. "It's a gentlemen's agreement that if you find a signal that could be real, you call up someone else to check it out in an effort to convince yourself," he said. "The people who found it didn't think enough to tell other people right away."

Meanwhile, Claudio Maccone, an Italian astronomer who collaborated with Russian researchers at RATAN-600 told Shotak that the Russian researchers didn't say anything because "they were shy." "To me that says they are not so convinced it's ET [extraterrestrial]," Shostak said, pointing out that Maccone even told him that he thinks "it is probably not ET."

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) plans to look for the signal again Monday night using Allen Telescope Array (ATA), Business Insider reported.

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