Name: HD164595.
Age: 4.5 billion years, give or take.
Appearance: Not visible to the naked eye.
Sounds like you don’t know too much about it. That’s because it hasn’t been up to much until now.
What exactly are we talking about? A sun-sized star 94.4 light years from Earth, in the constellation of Hercules.
How interesting can it be if no one has bothered to give it a proper name? Well, it has an apparent magnitude of 7.075, a similar mass and temperature to our own sun, and a Neptune-sized planet, HD164595 b, in its orbit.
Whoop de doo. And someone from out that way may be trying to get in touch.
What are you talking about? In May 2015, a strong radio signal coming from the vicinity of HD164595 was detected at the Ratan-600 observatory in Russia.
Why are we only hearing about it now? Because it is due to be made public in a forthcoming presentation, leading to speculation that the signal could be coming from a transmitter built by a Type I civilisation.
You mean ET phoned from home? Maybe.
Really? No.
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Stop toying with me! While it is conceivable the signal was sent by aliens, scientists from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Seti) remain sceptical.
That’s their job, I suppose. No one has been able to replicate the findings so far, even though many of the world’s telescopes have been trained on the vicinity in the last few days.
Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence. No, but a one-off signal is more consistent with something such as a stellar flare, or radio interference here on Earth.
You just have to believe, otherwise ET won’t call back. And even if aliens were pointing the signal directly at us, the transmitting power required would equal the total energy consumption of all humankind.
So it’s possible. But there is no reason to think they even know we’re here.
They can see our TV! They’ll be wanting Seinfeld explained to them! HD164595 is 94 light years away. None of our TV has reached there yet.
Thanks for ruining this for me. Any time.
Do say: “HELLO FROM PLANET EARTH. NO NEED TO REPLY IF YOU’RE SLIMY.”
Don’t say: “SPOILER ALERT: CHANDLER AND MONICA EVENTUALLY GET IT TOGETHER.”
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