11/27/2023 0 Comments 2004 radio signal from spacePM Modi attacks Opposition ahead of no-confidence debate, says I.N.D.I.A alliance plagued by mutual distrust This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Gareth Dorrian, Post Doctoral Research Fellow in Space Science, University of Birmingham No conclusive evidence that extraterrestrial life exists has been found … yet. Today, the scientists behind the discovery believe that the unusual dips in light are caused by clouds of cosmic dust passing across the face of the star.Īs exciting as they are, it is important to treat claims of alien life with a healthy dose of scepticism, and this is indeed what scientists do. For example, radio telescopes have failed to detectany unusual radio emissions from the star. But further observations have found no corroborating evidence to support this possibility. Some also speculated that these were signatures of an advanced alien species building a structure around the star. This highly unusual behaviour prompted numerous theories to explain the observations, including cometary dust or debris from a massive impact gradually spreading out to cover the face of the star. Data from the Kepler Space Telescopeshowed not just a regular dimming, as one might expect from a planetary orbit, but highly irregular dips in the light and, interestingly, a consistent decrease in light output over several years.Īlien megastructure? Droneandy/Shutterstock Tabby’s Star is named after astronomer Tabitha Boyajian who was lead author on the paper announcing the discovery. In 2015, professional astronomers working with citizen scientists from the Planet Hunters project announced the discovery of a nearby star displaying unusually strong and consistent dimming over time. Tabby’s StarĪ key tool of planet hunting is the dimming method – observing light from a star to see if it periodically dips in a regular fashion as an orbiting planet passes in front of it. The exact origin of the Wow! signal is still not fully agreed upon today, and remains an intriguing mystery. Various explanations have been proposed over the years including, recently, that the signal was generated by a passing comet, or transmissions from an Earth-orbiting satellite. The signal was so remarkable at the time that the astronomer on duty, Jerry Ehman, circled the print out of the signal with red pen and wrote “Wow!” next to it. The exact signal has not been detected again since, despite frequent radio surveys of the same part of the sky. These factors make it quite difficult to envisage a natural cause, as most natural radio sources can be detected across a wide range of frequencies. The signal lasted for just a couple of minutes, was very high powered and was detected over a narrow range of frequencies. In 1977, the Big Ear radio telescope in the US detected an unusual radio signal while scanning the sky. Methane can also be produced by several inorganic processes, including by heated rocks. Once again, however, it must be stressed that this not conclusive proof of life. This is also intriguing as living organisms on Earth are known to release methane. More recently, minute quantities of methane have been found in the Martian atmosphere. These results therefore remain inconclusive and are still debated today. Several inorganic chemical reactions have been proposed as an explanation. Intriguingly, this particular experiment did show a steady increase in carbon-14 over time which was indeed terminated after heating to above the boiling point of water. The carbon-14 would then increasingly be “breathed out” over time, showing a steady increase in concentration within the reaction chamber.Īfter the chemical analyses, each soil sample was steadily heated to hundreds of degrees to destroy any microbes, with the intention of seeing whether any such reactions in the soil ceased. In theory, this should be absorbed by any growing and multiplying microbes. In one of them, nutrients containing radioactive carbon-14 were added to the soil samples. The experiments chemically treated small samples of Martian soil in reaction chambers on board the landers. In the 1970s Nasa’s Vikingrobotic landers carried a series of experiments designed to test the Martian soil for the presence of microorganisms.
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