The strong signals, believed to be emanating from advanced alien civilizations, were actually from a Soviet military satellite, according to a Russian news agency.
Earlier reports disclosed that those signals intercepted by radio astronomers in Russia were emanating from a cluster of stars 94 light years away -- the Hercules constellation.
The power of the signals and their frequency seemed to indicate a message from "advanced aliens". There was a wave of excitement everywhere.
"This could be a type II civilization," buzzed many aspirants. It seemed to be a great SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) breakthrough.
So this seemed to be pretty much on top in the Kardashev scale. This interesting scale was named after its astronomer creator, who was trying to find out the "technological advancement" of a civilization.
Now we humans seem to be pretty low on the scale, as type 1. Although we harness solar energy, the use of fossil fuels is still widespread. We become completely type I when we use just renewable power.
The other kind is the type II civilization that can completely harness the sun's energy. The comforting news is that there has never been another alien world to compete with ours so far. But now follows the scary news---the alien signal seemed to give an energy output on a massive scale, much beyond the earth's fossil record. Did this alien source belong to that type of civilization then?
It did look like a great breakthrough. But then there was a blow, and the Russians blew it.
In a press release from the Russian Academy of Sciences, we first read that "...an interesting radio signal at a wavelength of 2.7 cm was detected in the direction of one of the objects (star system HD164595 in Hercules) in 2015."
That got everyone up in excitement.
But the following lines were a big wet blanket: "Subsequent processing and analysis of the signal revealed its most probable terrestrial origin."
But the "terrestrial" origin turned out to be a Russian military satellite that was alien to everyone -- an earthling creation, that of the Russians.
The Russian News Agency TASS spoke to Alexander Ipatov, from the Russian Academy of Sciences. "We, indeed, discovered an unusual signal," he told TASS. "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."
RAS writes, "It can be said with confidence that no sought-for signal has been detected yet."
Oh dear and well---back to the aliens. Goodbye till we meet---if we ever do.
