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‘Alien signal’ debunked as cosmic clickbait conspiracy

Reports of signals from a alien civilisation appear to have been exaggerated.

Reports of signals from a alien civilisation appear to have been exaggerated. Photo: Getty

Stand down space cadets and holster those blasters!

The exciting and somewhat alarming news that Russian scientists have been in contact with a far-flung civilisation much more advanced than our own is in fact a cosmic-sized clickbait conspiracy.

Tuesday dawned with dozens of Earthling media outlets reporting that a Russian radio telescope had picked up a strong signal from HD164595, a star in the constellation Hercules, only 95 light years away from Earth – and almost the same size of our own life-giving sun.

The damned Ruskies reportedly kept this discovery secret for more than a year. The signal was actually picked up by the Russian Academy of Sciences Ratan-600 radio telescope on 15 May 2015.

So why keep it hush-hush?

Clearly the Russians are hoping to curry favour with the superior life forms to stage a planetary takeover.

In an Observer piece calmly titled Not a Drill: SETI Is Investigating a Possible Extraterrestrial Signal From Deep Space the story is said to have been broken by “interstellar space reporter Paul Glister”, a US writer who runs a blog called ‘Centauri Dreams’.

Other outlets, including The Guardian, also cite Glister, who apparently has a long history of writing sensible, if sometimes speculative, stories about deep space exploration.

MARS ATTACKS!

Were the Russians hoping to cosy up to our expected alien overlords? Photo: Warner Brothers

In his blog report, Glister writes: “No one is claiming that this is the work of an extraterrestrial civilization, but it is certainly worth further study.

“Working out the strength of the signal, the researchers say that if it came from an isotropic beacon, it would be of a power possible only for a Kardashev Type II civilization.

“If it were a narrow beam signal focused on our Solar System, it would be of a power available to a Kardashev Type I civilization.”

The Kardashev Scale, developed in 1964 by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev, is a measure of a civilisation’s technological advancement based on the energy it can harness for communication.

GettyImages-173300039

The space signal was at first thought to have come from a sophisticated alien society. Photo: Getty

A Type I civilisation can capture and store energy from its own sun. A Type II civilisation can control all the energy of a neighbouring star.

Heady stuff

Glister says he based his report on a paper that was quietly doing the astronomical rounds that discussed the detection of “a strong signal in the direction of HD164595”.

This simple assertion, coupled with Glister’s not unreasonable ponderings, led to a flurry of media reporting, some of it cautious and heavy with caveats – but still the alien angle has had a blistering workout.

The New Daily was equally set to launch – before talking with Glen Nagle, Education and Public Outreach Manager at the CSIRO’s Deep Space Communication Complex in Canberra. The centre is run on behalf of NASA.

According to Mr Nagle, citing a report he had read early in the day, the Russians did in fact detect a strong signal a year ago.

They ran through a checklist to determine that the signal wasn’t an anomaly, that it wasn’t coming from a satellite and wasn’t due to equipment failure.

The signal then began to slip below the horizon.

What was thought to be an alien signal was a NASA SOHO spacecraft.

What was thought to be an alien signal was a NASA SOHO spacecraft. Photo: NASA

Mr Nagle said that ordinarily, the Russians should have contacted an observatory in the southern hemisphere, where the signal would have been rising in the sky. But they didn’t, on the basis that they wanted to continue doing their own checks.

“They then found it was the SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) spacecraft,” said Mr Nagle.

The SOHO spacecraft was launched 21 years ago as a joint project between NASA and Europe.

SOHO is stationed at what is known as a Lagrange point, a gravitationally stable point between the Earth, Sun and our moon – about 1.5 million kilometres away.

SOHO could be said to have a history of mischief making. It went ‘missing’ for two years and only returned online a week ago.

Late in the day, however, Mr Nagle called to say he wasn’t so sure now. There were so many conflicting reports coming out he felt it necessary to say: “No one is really sure of what is going on.”

Watch this … space.

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