'Alien' Signal Had Earthly Cause, Russian Scientists Say
False alarms like this one are all part of the process of hunting for extraterrestrial life. Researchers find something interesting, and then they — and their colleagues around the world — try to figure out what it means, said Seth Shostak, senior astronomer with the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, California, who was not part of the detection team.
Indeed, the SETI Institute pointed the Allen Telescope Array, a network of radio dishes in northern California, at HD 164595 on Sunday and Monday nights (Aug. 28 and Aug. 29).
They found nothing. But Shostak and his colleagues will continue investigating promising candidate signals and exoplanet targets throughout the galaxy, he said.
"One can easily get kind of cynical about these things — 'Oh, man, another one of these false alarms,'" Shostak told Space.com on Monday, speculating that the HD 164595 signal might be a false alarm. "You have to guard against that, because, in this business, there are going to be a lot of false alarms."
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
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