Mysterious alien signals picked up by Russian scientists last year did not come from an advanced extraterrestrial civilization, but from an old Soviet military satellite, says Russian news agency TASS, much to the disappointment of astronomers and alien enthusiasts across the world.
As is usually the case when promising news is explained away with less exciting causes, a significant number of people are not convinced by TASS’ version, believing it is one of the many cover ups aimed at deceiving us regarding the existence of intelligent life not from our planet.
Initially, there was speculation that the alien signals came from a star system 94 light years from Earth. However, an investigation points to an old Soviet military satellite as being the source of the mystery.
Alien signals from Hercules constellation?
The Russian scientists who originally intercepted the enigmatic signals, said they believed that they came from a cluster of stars ninety-four light years away in the Hercules constellation.
The signals’ frequency and power suggested there was a good chance they were messages from smart extraterrestrials. Excitement in the scientific community suddenly spiked.
The source of the signal – HD 164595 – is a solar system which is a few billion years older than our own, but is centered on a star of a similar brightness and size to our Sun. The signal was picked up by the RATAN-600 radio telescope in Zelenchukskaya, Russia.
Scientists say that HD 164595 has a Neptune-sized planet that is about seventeen times the mass of Earth. Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute in California, says its orbit is too tight – it is too close to its sun – for life as we know it to exist.
Eminent theoretical physicist Prof. Stephen Hawking believes that the Universe is teeming with life. (Image: hawking.org.uk)
Just because it is the only planet we know of to orbit HD 164595, this does not necessarily mean there are no others, Dr. Shostak pointed out.
Alien signals not alien
The Russian news agency wrote this week: “Subsequent processing and analysis of the signal revealed its most probable terrestrial origin.”
In fact, that terrestrial origin turned out to be a man-made Soviet military satellite.
In an interview with TASS, Alexander Ipatov, who works at the Russian Academy of Sciences, said:
“We, indeed, discovered an unusual signal. However, an 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.”
“It can be said with confidence that no sought-for signal has been detected yet.”