Tuesday, 30 Aug 2016

Contact?

A Russian radio telescope, the RATAN-600 telescope in Zelenchukskayap (try saying that 5 times quickly), picked up a strong “spike” in signals coming from a sun like star some 95 light years from Earth. Apparently this was in May 2015 but they seem to have forgotten to tell the rest of the international scientific community – maybe they didn’t think it was very important?

The signal’s strength indicates that if it in fact came from a isotropic beacon, the power source would have to be built by a Kardashev Type II civilization. (The Kardashev scale is used to determine the progress of a civilization’s technological development by measuring how much energy was used to transmit an interstellar message.) An ‘Isotropic’ beacon means a communication source emitting a signal with equal power in all directions while promoting signal strength throughout travel.

I wonder how many UFO nerds are busy re-installing their Seti@Home screensavers that were so popular in the early 2000’s.

Via NextDraft

Random thought: If the Kardashev scale measures a civilization’s technological development, would a scale that measures a civilization’s regression be called the Kardashian scale?