The Skeptics Society & Skeptic magazine

Despite over 50 years of effort, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) enterprise has yet to detect any telltale signs of sentient life beyond Earth. But exciting news of an anomalous star 1,400 light-years from Earth has raised new hopes that we are not alone in the galaxy after all. Using data collected by the Kepler space telescope, astronomers discovered that the distant star—KIC 8462852—flickers in an unusual way, as if some unknown celestial bodies were intermittently obscuring it. Of the roughly 150,000 stars within view of the Kepler telescope, KIC 8462852 is the only one that glimmers in this odd fashion.¹ Since it has been observed over the past few years, KIC 8462852 has dimmed dramatically, at times dropping in brightness as much as 22 percent.² Moreover, the recorded dips have not been regular, but uneven and unpredictable. Tabetha Boyajian announced these amazing findings that she and members of Planet Hunters—a citizen science program launched at Yale University—in a paper recently published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.³

A number of theories have been advanced to explain the anomalous activity of the star. Conceivably, the dips in light could be occasioned by an orbiting a planet, but even a Jupiter-sized planet would only dim this type of star by only 1 percent as it transited across. Furthermore, the irregular flickering associated with the star would not be consistent with a planet making a regular orbit, which would produce predictable dimming. Perhaps fragments from a planetary collision could be responsible for the dimming light, but such events are so rare that we would not expect Kepler to pick up such activity based on probabilities.⁴ Finally, the star could be surrounded by an accretion disk of dust and rubble that has not yet agglomerated into planets or been gobbled up by the star itself. Such an explanation would be convincing if the star was young, but KIC 8462852 appears to be mature. As Jason Wright, a professor of astronomy at Penn State University, noted, the star is moving too fast to have formed recently, as it fails to show any infrared signs of a big disk that would normally be associated with the material that could cause such dips in brightness.⁵

Because scientists have yet to advance a convincing natural explanation, attention has turned to more tantalizing possibilities. By far the most exciting is that an alien megastructure is responsible for blocking the light emitted by the star.⁶ After news of the star’s unusual features was released, SETI scientists quickly began using the Allen Telescope Array in California to examine radio emissions from the area of star for any signs of artificiality.

People have long thought about the prospect of aliens, but it was not until around the middle of the last century that a viable methodology of detecting extraterrestrial intelligence was put forward. In 1959 Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison published an article in which they called for searching for radio signals as a method to detect extraterrestrial intelligence. They argued that radio seemed the logical medium that aliens would use to attempt to make contact with other civilizations.⁷ The next year, Frank Drake initiated Project Ozma, which used a radio telescope to search for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia.⁸ He also created the so-called Drake equation as a formula designed to estimate the number of communicating civilizations in the galaxy.⁹

So far, the SETI Institute has not detected any alien radio signals coming from KIC 8462852.¹⁰ The major drawback with assuming that radio would be a detectable extraterrestrial medium of communication is that over time, our own civilization’s electromagnetic footprint has been fading. In the early days of SETI, scientists believed that a relentless rise in radio traffic would develop as wealth and technology advanced. However, just the reverse occurred, as we have come to rely on methods of communications that minimize radio frequency power leakage, such as cable television and submarine telephone cables. Since this has been the trend on Earth, it is likely to be the case for technological civilizations beyond our solar system as well.¹¹ What is more, in order for us to pick up an alien radio transmission, it would have to be beamed directly at us. As the SETI scientist Doug Vakoch opined, “[t]he Klingon version of Gilligan’s Island is not going to reach Earth.”¹²

Instead of listening for radio transmission, some scientists have counseled that an optical methodology could be a more feasible approach for the SETI project. On that note, in 1964 the Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev propounded a classification of extraterrestrial civilizations based on their methods of energy extraction. His scale has three categories. A Type I civilization can harness all available energy sources on its planet. A Type II civilization harnesses energy directly from the star in its solar system, not merely using solar power, but the mining of energy from the star. A Type III civilization is able to harness the power of other stars beyond its own solar system.¹³

How would a civilization advance on this scale? A civilization might advance to Type I status by applying fusion power or by producing antimatter to be used as an energy source.¹⁴ To advance beyond Type I status, the theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson once theorized that a hypothetical megastructure could be employed to encompass a star as a system of orbiting solar power satellites to capture a star’s energy output. Constructing such a device—a Dyson sphere—would be a gargantuan engineering undertaking, but theoretically possible. Dyson conjectured that an alien civilization could tear apart planets and asteroids to use as the material to build the necessary structures. Almost certainly, a device such as a Dyson sphere would dramatically alter the light spectrum of the enclosed or partially-enclosed star, and in doing so, create a noticeable infrared glow that could be identified by peering astronomers, even on the far side of the galaxy. For that reason, Dyson urged SETI scientists to focus on technology, rather than radio signals.¹⁵

If it is a megastructure orbiting KIC 8462852, then the star could be hosting a Type II civilization. The Internet is abuzz with speculation that a Dyson’s sphere is responsible for the star’s erratic glimmering and herein lies the great ET paradox. If we leave aside the extraterrestrial hypothesis for UFOs and assume that Earth has never been visited by aliens, then it is likely that we will discover intelligent extraterrestrial aliens before they discover us, their technological superiority notwithstanding. The laws of physics, as we currently conceive them, add credence to this assumption. If Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity is indeed inviolable, then information cannot be transmitted or received faster than the speed of light. This fact would give us a comparative advantage in a SETI effort vis-à-vis our galactic neighbors. To be sure, using advanced technology and spectroscopy, alien astronomers could probably determine Earth’s atmospheric molecules, such as oxygen and methane, and conclude that our planet has a biosphere. But even if a biosphere is detected, that alone will not automatically imply that an intelligence species resides on the planet let alone has built a technological civilization. It is unlikely that alien astronomers would find any revealing signs of civilization on our planet insofar as we have yet to construct any massive artifacts capable of being detected.

But assuming that their instruments are capable of amazing feats of detection, at a distance of 1,400 light years, alien astronomers in the area of KIC 8462852 would see a snapshot of Earth in the 7th century when Europe was in the throes of the Dark Ages, Mohammed was allegedly receiving his divine revelations in a mountain cave near Mecca, and the Tang Dynasty was emerging in China. It is doubtful that any of these events would be noticed by an extra-terrestrial intelligence. Even the Great Wall of China would go undetected, as much of its construction was not underway until the 14th century during the Ming Dynasty. And contrary to myth, this structure is not visible from space even from low Earth orbit—a mere 100 miles away—at least to the unaided eye, as the Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei discovered to his disappointment. Our city lights might be visible, but because electrification did not really take hold until the early 20th century, aliens might have to wait a long time before they see them. Finally, even if alien radio telescopes were so powerful that they could detect our relatively weak television and radio transmissions, it will be centuries before they will arrive at KIC 8462852. Because Earth has been producing artificial radio transmissions for only about a century, there is a strong possibility that they have not reached any alien civilizations to date. Conversely, by astronomical standards, it is reasonable to speculate that an advanced alien civilization could have preceded ours by over a million years, in which case its radio transmissions could suffuse the galaxy, including our solar system.

Understandably, astronomers have counseled caution, pointing out that the odds are high that a natural explanation will eventually be found for the star’s flickering luminosity that has nothing to do with aliens. There have been other false positives in the past. For example, in 1968 a group of Cambridge radio astronomers discovered what they called “rapidly pulsating radio sources.”¹⁶ Initially, there was excitement that these emissions could have been artificial signals sent by an extraterrestrial civilization, but alas, it was determined that pulsars, which are produced by rapidly rotating neutron stars, were detected instead.¹⁷

In any event, searching for the cause of these strange dips will make for some fascinating research because they have defied conventional explanations so far. The discovery of roughly 2,000 exoplanets (planets located outside of our solar system) over the past two decades confirms the existence of possible habitats for alien life. Moreover, astronomers have determined that a number exoplanets have earth-like characteristics and reside in the habitable zones of their star systems.¹⁸ By inference, these findings bolster the case for life existing outside of our solar system in which case we may someday discover evidence of an advanced alien civilization. By doing so, this would give us hope that perhaps we too can work through the myriad of problems afflicting our contemporary world and survive.

About the Author

Dr. George Michael received his Ph.D. from George Mason University’s School of Public Policy. He is an associate professor of criminal justice at West-field State University in Massachusetts. Previously, he was an associate professor of nuclear counter-proliferation and deterrence theory at the Air War College in Montgomery, Alabama. He is the author of seven books: Confronting Right-Wing Extremism and Terrorism in the USA, The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right, Willis Carto and the American Far Right, Theology of Hate: A History of the World Church of the Creator, Lone Wolf Terror and the Rise of Leaderless Resistance, Extremism in America (editor), and Preparing for Contact: When Humans and Extraterrestrials Finally Meet. In addition, his articles have been published in numerous academic journals.