First came the suggestion that an “alien megastructure” had been observed around KIC 8462852, a.k.a. Tabby’s Star. Months later, people were talking about a signal seen by a Russian telescope that some thought was transmitted from the environs of a stellar cousin of

By Seth Shostak NBC News 8-1-17

the sun. And not long after that, the Cyclopean Arecibo antenna in Puerto Rico reported weird signals that seemed to come from the dwarf star Ross 128, a scant 11 light-years away.


These three claims purporting to show the existence of aliens haven’t panned out. But what happens if some future claim does? What preparations are in place to deal with the discovery of a radio signal or a laser flash that would prove beyond doubt that we have cosmic compeers? Does the government have a plan? Does anyone?


... Back in 1989, when a now-defunct NASA program to search for extraterrestrial intelligence was gaining steam, protocols were drafted to spell out best practices in case the search proved successful. These were later updated and streamlined by the International Academy of Astronautics SETI Permanent Committee. (Click here to see the revised protocols.)
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There’s no such thing as a “close call” in SETI – either the radio telescope has picked up an alien signal, or it hasn’t. “Close” doesn’t exist in this one-bit experiment, any more than it does in pregnancy.

By Seth Shostak www.seti.org 6-13-17

[...]

... At close to midnight on August 15, 1977, the massive radio telescope of the Ohio State University, known to its friends as the Big Ear, recorded a signal so impressive to the astronomer examining the instrument’s logs, he wrote “Wow!” on the computer printout.

It had all the characteristics one would anticipate from a signal produced by a deep space transmitter. This agreement with hopeful expectation, coupled with the undoubted appeal of the signal’s beguiling moniker, led to many efforts to find the WOW signal a second time. These attempts were made on such radio telescopes as the Very Large Array in New Mexico and, of course, the Big Ear itself. However, the result was always the same: radio silence.

[...]

But a paper published more than a year ago by Antonio Paris and Evan Davies makes a different claim: a natural solution to the puzzle of the WOW signal. It wasn’t earthly interference, problems with the equipment, or even ET; it was natural radio emission from hydrogen gas streaming off a nearby comet. ...

The comet hypothesis, in my opinion, doesn’t work....
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A new "super-Earth" was just discovered in the constellation Cetus some 40 light-years away. This newfound planet could be Earth's big brother. It's roughly 40 percent larger than our world. OK, you say, so what? Thousands of exoplanets have been found in the past decade. True, but this one has been called "the best candidate in the search for signs of life." And that sounds pretty special.

By Seth Shostak www.nbcnews.com 4-26-17

But before you start high-fiving strangers or wagering with your significant other that we're about to hear from the little gray guys, consider the bigger picture. When should we get excited about progress in the search for alien life ...
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A star system 94 light-years away is in the spotlight as a possible candidate for intelligent inhabitants, thanks to the discovery of a radio signal by a group of Russian astronomers.

Seth Shostak www.seti.org 8-30-16

HD 164595, a solar system a few billion years older than the Sun but centered on a star of comparable size and brightness, is the purported source of a signal found with the RATAN-600 radio telescope in Zelenchukskaya, at the northern foot of the Caucasus Mountains. This system is known to have one planet, a Neptune-sized world in a very tight orbit, making it unattractive for life. However, there could be other planets in this system that are still undiscovered.

The signal seems to have been discussed in a presentation given by several Russian astronomers as well as Italian researcher, Claudio Maccone, the chair of the International Academy of Astronautics Permanent SETI Committee. Maccone has recently sent an email to SETI scientists in which he describes this presentation, including the signal ascribed to star system HD 164595.

Could it be a transmission from a technically proficient society? ...
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If you’re worried about little gray guys with no hair and amygdaloid eyes, Hillary Clinton wants to help. Last week, in an interview with late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel, Clinton said that she planned to follow up on inquiries made years ago by her husband, and bare what the government really knows about visiting aliens.

By Seth Shostak The Huffington Post 3-30-16

The principal question: Are a few such cosmic beings — or at least some of their spacecraft — under wraps at Area 51, Nevada’s creepy, cryptic military facility? Inquiring minds want to know.

Of course they do. But I doubt that Clinton can provide a satisfactory answer.

First, the back story. For decades, surveys have shown that roughly one-third of the populace will raise their hand if asked, “Do you think Earth is being visited by extraterrestrials?” That’s a hundred million Americans, and of course, some of them have political influence. When Bill Clinton was president, the wealthy philanthropist Laurance Rockefeller sponsored, and then promoted, a document that described what was called the best evidence for alien craft. He met with Bill Clinton in 1996, and encouraged him make a deep dive on the subject. Clinton tried to learn if cosmic creatures were warehoused at Area 51, but said he came up empty.

Now we have UFO redux. Hillary is being urged by her campaign manager, John Podesta, to think again. Or at least, to ask again. Podesta, who was Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff and more recently Counselor to President Obama, now chairs Hillary’s campaign. He’s long pushed for disclosure of any government information germane to the UFO question, and for over two decades has made this a minor leitmotif for the Clintons.

So what is Hillary going to do that her husband didn’t? [...]
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The other shoe has dropped. After a century of speculation and a half-century of searching, science teams using instruments built by Caltech and MIT have made a discovery that will take up permanent residency in physics textbooks from now to the end of textbooks. They've found the gravity waves that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity predicted must pervade the cosmos.

By Seth Shostak www.huffingtonpost.com 2-11-16

[...]

I often get correspondence from folks who think that listening for radio signals or looking for laser flashes are fundamentally flawed approaches to hunting down evidence for alien beings. The extraterrestrials, these people suggest, will have moved on to a more avant-garde communication mode: gravity waves.

There are, indeed, some positive arguments for aliens with a penchant for palaver to opt for gravity wave communication. Gravity waves can travel unhindered through the dusty material that suffuses interstellar space -- unlike laser light. And gravity waves aren't distorted and scattered by the ionized gas that clutters the cosmos -- unlike radio waves.

In addition, you don't have to aim your gravity wave detector in any particular direction: the waves go right through the Earth and reach you from everywhere. [...]
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      The SETI Institute is following up on the possibility that the stellar system KIC 8462852 might be home to an advanced civilization.

This star, slightly brighter than the Sun and more than 1400 light-years away, has been the subject of scrutiny by NASA’s Kepler space telescope. It has shown some surprising behavior that’s odd even by the generous standards of cosmic phenomena. KIC 8462852 occasionally dims by as much as 20 percent, suggesting that there is some material in orbit around this star that blocks its light.

For various reasons, it’s obvious that this material is not simply a planet. A favored suggestion is that it is debris from comets that have been drawn into relatively close orbit to the star.

But another, and obviously intriguing, possibility is that this star is home to a technologically sophisticated society that has constructed a phalanx of orbiting solar panels (a so-called Dyson swarm) that block light from the star.

To investigate this idea, we have been using the Allen Telescope Array to search for non-natural radio signals from the direction of KIC 8462852. This effort is looking for both narrow-band signals (similar to traditional SETI experiments) as well as somewhat broader transmissions that might be produced, for example, by powerful spacecraft. [...]
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     One thing that strikes me about claims of alien visitation is that so much of the evidence is musty and fusty.

Every day, I get stories and articles from people around the world who aggregate UFO news. But much of it is not news -- it's olds. The folks who think there's good proof that Earth is a stomping ground for extraterrestrials are still hung up on the Roswell incident of 1947 or its British opposite number, the Rendlesham Forest event of 1980. They're still citing the testimony of aging politicians, defense establishment types and Apollo astronauts who "know something."

The few alternatives to this vintage archive are contemporary photos and videos of vague lights in the sky, low-resolution and low-confidence material that isn't likely to sway many scientists. The good stuff seems to be the old stuff.

To better judge if this is really true, I trawled the web for listings of "the best UFO cases." I quickly collected nearly 100 events that were considered worthy, of which 60 were unique, in the sense of not being repeats [...] .
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    Nearly 70 years after extraterrestrials supposedly pushed the wrong button in their spacecraft and nose-dived into scrubby ranchland near Roswell, New Mexico, that town is again in the news.

This time the headlines are centered on the discovery of an old Kodachrome slide showing a small, atrophied body laid out in a display case. It seems that the slide was found two dozen years ago in the house of a deceased Arizona couple, although its true provenance is sketchy. Recently, a handful of UFO researchers has decided that this old photo actually depicts an alien corpse, and possibly a victim of the 1947 crash that put Roswell on the public's mental map.

That would be important, if true. . . .

. . . Just one look at this lugubrious photo should trip your baloney detector. . . .
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