SETI's 'Strong Signal' Came From Earth (arstechnica.com)

Yesterday, it was reported that Russia has detected a strong signal around 11 GHz coming from HD164595, a star nearly identical in mass to the Sun and located about 95 light years away from Earth. Well, long story short the signal came Earth. Ars Technica reports: "First, astronomers with the search for extraterrestrial intelligence downplayed the possibility of an alien civilization. 'There are many other plausible explanations for this claimed transmission, including terrestrial interference,' Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer with SETI, wrote. Now the Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences has concurred, releasing a statement on the detection of a radio signal at the RATAN-600 radio astronomy observatory in southern Russia. 'Subsequent processing and analysis of the signal revealed its most probable terrestrial origin,' the Russian scientists said."

Comments

Re:That means......

[aliquis]

.. the search for intelligent life in the universe continues.

Re:Woohoo!

[ourlovecanlastforeve]

It's coming from the microwaves in the break room.

We've been over this.

Re:65 Billion years from earth

[Immerman]

I'll admit a 180 year round trip makes for slow conversations, but if we were to establish communication with an intelligent race elsewhere in the universe, there's no telling what we might learn from them. Physical travel between stars might never be practical, but an exchange of science, art, culture, and philosophy could be a practical reality. And any civilization we can detect across interstellar distances is almost certainly far more technologically advanced than we are, so there's no telling what we might learn.

Of course any sort of two-way communication begun at this point would be irrelevant to anyone currently alive, aside from whatever sociological fallout there might be to discovering with certainty that we're not alone (I'm sure a few religions would squirm for a while, and plenty of new cults would pop up), but there's also the possibility that a signal is the first of many to be detected, with further, more information-rich signals already in transit. Possibly at a much lower power that would be harder to detect. Like a loud, fiendishly expensive "Hey, Listen" chirp periodically introduced into an otherwise more economical data transmission.