Take down the “ Welcome Aliens ! ” bunting and pack off the cosmic red-faced carpet . New observations have intimate that the“alien megastructure”spotted around a remote star is probablynot alien at all , and likely has a more terrene ( but probably still interesting ) raw explanation . Here come the pretzels .
The star system KIC 8462852 , 1,400 light - years by , hit the intelligence big time when Jason Wright , an astrophysicist from Pennsylvania State University , suggest toThe Atlanticthat a huge dip in twinkle seen from the star – up to 20 percent of its lightness – could be artificial in origin . Naturally , this had people dreaming ofDyson spheres , vast theoretical structures that could potentially harness the power of full star , and other exciting extraterrestrial constructs .
But following the suggestion , the SETI ( Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence ) Institute in Mountain View , California , trainedtheir vast Allen Telescope Array of 42 antennas on the system . And now , after two weeks of observation , theresults are in – and it ’s disappointing word .
The array looked for signals between frequencies of one and 10 GHz , which would be consistent with emission from an alien race harnessing the world power of an intact star , and found nothing . They also looked for a “ hailing signal ” being broadcast out in all counseling , but to no avail . “ This rules out omnidirectional transmitter of approximately 100 times today ’s total terrestrial energy usage in the font of the narrow - set signals , and ten million times that usage for broadband emissions , ” astatementfrom SETI say .
The Allen Telescope Array , pictured , consists of 42 separate feeler . Seth Shostak / SETI Institute
“ The account of astronomy tell us that every time we thought we had feel a phenomenon due to the activities of extraterrestrial , we were wrong , ” SETI Institute director Seth Shostak suppose in the statement . “ But although it ’s quite likely that this whizz ’s strange behavior is due to nature , not extraterrestrial , it ’s only prudent to check such thing out . ”
All hope is not lost , though ; the insistency release notes that a sign being deliberately pointed in our direction would have a importantly lower absolute frequency , which has not been bet for yet . " Just because someone helicopters you into a field in Africa and you do n’t see any elephants , it is not substantiation that there are none , " Shostak told IFLScience . " So too do our measures only rule out signal at the level we could detect . "
However , the lack of a detection in the microwave frequency band that was studied , which Shostak thinks would be " favored for interstellar signalling , " suggest the physical object is more likely a innate than an artificial phenomenon . The most prominent hypothesis , suggested in a paperled by Tabetha Boyajian in September , is that it is a swarm of rubble , perhaps cometary in origin .
While the “ exotic ” theory can seemingly be ruled out , do n’t desperation just yet . With hundreds of billions of planet in our galaxy alone , it ’s pretty unlikely that ours is the only one that hosts life . Even in our own Solar System , there are hints that worlds such as Mars and Saturn ’s moon Enceladus may be habitable , and we’redoing our bestto find out if there ’s anything out there via various current and next ballistic capsule .
The dreaming may appear to be over for KIC 8462852 , but the lookup for other life in the universe go on .
