"An worldwide team of researchers has announced the detection of 'a strong signal in the direction of HD164595, '" stated Paul Gilster on his blog, Centauri Dreams, adding, "No one is claiming that this is the work of an extraterrestrial civilization".

A radio signal from a star 95 light years away has caused a flurry of activity among extraterrestrial hunters - along with some irritation.

The 11 gigahertz radio burst, lasting two seconds, was picked up on May 15, 2025 by the RATAN-600 radio telescope in Zelenchukskaya, Russia, and was kept under wraps for well over a year. Although the signal doesn't contain the names and addresses of our friendly alien neighbours, and no one is claiming that this is definitely an extraterrestrial hailing beacon, SETI researchers do think that it fits a lot of the criteria for it. If it is aliens, researchers say a signal of this type and strength could've been generated by a civilization at the Kardashev Type II level.

The Kardashev scale is an indicator of how advanced a civilisation is - Earth is a type I that can harbour energy from our sun, whereas a Type II would be much more advanced and would be able to use all of the energy from the host star- like a Dyson Sphere, for example. "The phone has been ringing all morning", said Dr. Seth Shostak, Ph.D., of the SETI Institute. Radio telescopes have been known to pick up rogue signals - everything from flushing toilets to cell phones. Although experts say the signal isn't definitive proof of extraterrestrial life, it's certainly got astronomers talking, and the topic is set to be discussed at the 67th International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, on September 27. In other words, he says more energy than all the sunlight falling on Earth. French astronomer Jean Schneider is considering the possibility that HD164595 is amplifying a background radio source through a process known as gravitational microlensing.

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Shostak said he and his team will investigate HD164595, saying his team pointed the Alien Telescope Array in the direction of the star. However, these follow-up observations from other organizations have not yet been possible because those who detected the signal sat on the discovery for over a year for unknown reasons.

"Without a confirmation of this signal, we can only say that it's 'interesting, '" Shostak wrote today in a blog post about the candidate signal detection.

Although it's fun to speculate, it's far more likely that the signal isn't an extraterrestrial beacon at all, but actually earthly interference.

So far, though, astronomers have not detected any unusual signals from the star, Shostak said. Over the weekend, they fired up the Allen Telescope Array - a large collection of radio telescopes northeast of San Francisco - and pointed it in the direction of the star. "I would follow it if I were the astronomers, but I would also not hype the fact that it may be a SETI signal, given the significant chance it could be something military".