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A star is being observed by alien hunters

By Lord Castillo | Update Date: Nov 09, 2015 10:21 AM EST

A weird phenomenon has been orbiting around a star that people are wondering if this phenomenon is even natural. SETI Institute used the Allen Telescope Array to observe on KIC 8462852 if there are any kinds of signal in the star that are made by an unknown civilization.

On November 5, 2015, SETI uploaded a paper about what they have heard so far. They said that if there are any aliens in the star, they are not being loud.

"No narrowband radio signals were found at a level of 180 - 300 Jy in a 1Hz channel, or wideband signals above 100 Jy in a 100kHz channel," writes the SETI Institute team in the paper.

Seti posted on their institute blog that there are two types of signal that Allen Telescope Array was able to get from the star:

1) Narrow-band signals, of order 1 Hz in width, such as would be generated as a "hailing signal" for societies wishing to announce their presence. This is the type of signal most frequently looked for by radio SETI experiments. (2) Broad-band signals that might be due to beamed propulsion within this star system. If astroengineering projects are really underway in the vicinity of KIC 8462852, one might reasonably expect the presence of spacecraft to service this activity. If these craft are propelled by intense microwave beams, some of that energy might manifest itself as broad-band radio leakage.

This means that there is no evidence that there are aliens in the star that are reaching out to Earth.

"The history of astronomy tells us that every time we thought we had found a phenomenon due to the activities of extraterrestrials, we were wrong," Institute astronomer Seth Shostak said in the blog post. "But although it's quite likely that this star's strange behavior is due to nature, not aliens, it's only prudent to check such things out."

Seti will continue to study the star if there are any aliens in the star or the phenomenon is just natural.

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