‘Peculiar’ radio signals emerge from nearby star

MIAMI (AFP) — Some very “peculiar signals” have been noticed coming from a star just 11 light-years away, scientists in Puerto Rico say.

The mystery has gripped the internet as speculation mounts about the potential for a discovery of alien life on the red dwarf star known as Ross 128 — despite the best attempts of astronomers to put such rumors to rest.

“In case you are wondering, the recurrent aliens hypothesis is at the bottom of many other better explanations,” said a blog post by Abel Mendez, director of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo.

Something unusual first came to light in April and May, when the team was studying a series of small and relatively cool red dwarf stars, some of which are known to have planets circling them.

Ross 128 is not known to have planets, but “we realized that there were some very peculiar signals in the 10-minute dynamic spectrum that we obtained from Ross 128.”

The signals were observed May 13 at 0053 GMT, and “consisted of broadband quasi-periodic non-polarized pulses with very strong dispersion-like features,” he wrote.

“We believe that the signals are not local radio frequency interferences (RFI) since they are unique to Ross 128 and observations of other stars immediately before and after did not show anything similar."