I like to think that we're not alone in the universe, but the odds suggest that we are not given its shear size. But I am skeptical when I see stories of UFOs and the like in the press, but this particular story caught my attention. Two astronomers from Laval University in Quebec have claimed to have discovered not one but 234 alien civilisations.
In 2012 Ermanno Borra, from Laval University in Quebec suggested that aliens might want to communicate with humans by shining lasers towards planet earth. Their idea then would be to try and detect the rapid bursts of light hidden in the spectrum of their host star.
So with this theory, Borra’s graduate student Eric Trottier decided to do some mathematical analysis on 2.5 million stars (I'm glad I didn't have to do it) and found 234 stars. The mathematical analysis is called the Fourier Transform (FT) which allows you to analyse the various frequency components that make up a signal. The analysis revealed periodic modulated components to the signal, which according to scientists, could only have been generated by little green men. They were even more convinced when they discovered that the majority of the stars were in the same spectral class as our sun. Moreover, they revealed in a research paper that they were able to eliminate other possible explanations such as instrumental effects, rotation of molecules, rapid stellar pulsations, and peculiar chemistry.
“We find that the detected signals have exactly the shape of an ETI signal predicted in the previous publication and are therefore in agreement with this hypothesis,” the researchers wrote in the paper.
“The fact that they are only found in a very small fraction of stars within a narrow spectral range centered near the spectral type of the Sun is also in agreement with the ETI hypothesis.”
Many scientists are sceptical however and the breakthrough listen project designed to discover extraterrestrial life backed by Stephen Hawking are now looking to disprove the researchers by coming up with their own explanation. The SETI community are also pretty skeptical as they have rated this discovery as being between 0 and 1 on a scale of 0 to 10 on the scale they use to quantify detentions of extra terrestrial life beyond earth, so not much hope there then!
So, what do you guys think, have they got their calculations wrong or is this is a software glitch? Who knows, I hope they have found little green men but they must back up their extraordinary claims with extraordinary evidence in my opinion and this is about as bold a claim as you can get. If we have detected aliens though, I definitely think we should think twice about making our existence known to them for obvious reasons.
