{"id":19264,"date":"2016-08-31T22:55:03","date_gmt":"2016-08-31T14:55:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/russian-seti-researchers-say-interesting-radio-signal-was-definitely-not-aliens\/"},"modified":"2016-08-31T22:55:03","modified_gmt":"2016-08-31T14:55:03","slug":"russian-seti-researchers-say-interesting-radio-signal-was-definitely-not-aliens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/russian-seti-researchers-say-interesting-radio-signal-was-definitely-not-aliens\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian SETI researchers say interesting radio signal was definitely not aliens"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_271359\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-271359\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-271359\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/160831-ratan-seti-630x399.jpg\" alt=\"RATAN-600 radio telescope\" width=\"630\" height=\"399\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/160831-ratan-seti-630x399.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/160831-ratan-seti-768x487.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/160831-ratan-seti.jpg 1115w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-271359\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Detectors for the RATAN-600 telescope form a wide ring in this fisheye view. (Credit: SAO-RAS)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Russian astronomers acknowledge that they picked up an \u201cinteresting radio signal\u201d in the course of their search for alien transmissions, but that the signal was most probably a case of terrestrial interference.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt can be said with confidence that no sought-for signal has been detected yet,\u201d astronomers from the Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences said in a statement&nbsp;issued Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>The signal spike at 11 GHz was detected by the RATAN-600 radio telescope in the southern Russian republic of Karachay-Cherkessia in May 2015, during a campaign that\u2019s part of the worldwide search for extraterrestrial intelligence (a.k.a. SETI).<\/p>\n<p>The detection didn\u2019t come to light until last weekend, but once news started circulating, it touched off parallel observations by the SETI Institute and the Breakthrough Listen Initiative. Those groups focused on&nbsp;the same area of the sky that was the target of the Russian observation: a sunlike star known as HD 164595 in the constellation Hercules.<\/p>\n<p>Nothing noteworthy was detected.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"SETI Astronomer Seth Shostak talks about the signal\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8ZktoFPtBUY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In their&nbsp;statement, the Russian astronomers said last year\u2019s signal initially piqued their interest, but \u201csubsequent processing and analysis of the signal revealed its most probable terrestrial origin.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The statement provided no further details about the source. However, Russia\u2019s TASS news service quoted astronomer Alexander Ipatov as saying that he and his colleagues at the Special Astrophysical Observatory had detected a similarly \u201cunusual signal\u201d during the Soviet era.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAn additional check showed that it was emanating from a Soviet military satellite, which had not been entered into any of the catalogs of celestial bodies,\u201d TASS quoted Ipatov as saying.<\/p>\n<p>Satellite interference is a prime suspect for SETI false alarms, as the SETI Institute found out in 1997 when a research satellite called the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory set off an alert.<\/p>\n<p>Today the SETI Institute\u2019s senior astronomer, Seth Shostak, said the failure to find a follow-up signal of interest would be consistent with terrestrial interference, including transmissions from a military satellite.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLook, you can\u2019t always be cynical,\u201d Shostak said in a video report. \u201cIf a signal is looking promising, we are going to check it out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Russian astronomers said HD 164595 was just one of many objects targeted during their SETI campaign. \u201cAs for the other objects of the RATAN-600 survey, it is too early to claim about any reliable scientific results,\u201d they said. \u201cUsing the obtained measurements, we are only able to estimate the upper limit of the detection of the studied areas.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>An earlier version of this report misstated the timing of the Russian statement. Thanks to Daniel Fischer for setting me straight.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Detectors for the RATAN-600 telescope form a wide ring in this fisheye view. (Credit: SAO-RAS) Russian astronomers acknowledge that they picked up an \u201cinteresting radio signal\u201d in the course of their search for alien transmissions, but that the signal was most probably a case of terrestrial interference. \u201cIt can be said with confidence that no [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5516,352,3754],"class_list":["post-19264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-hd-164595","tag-russia","tag-seti"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19264"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}