The SETI Institute looked at oddly dimming star and found nothing

The Allen Telescope Array looked for signs of life, but alas it found none. (credit: SETI Institute)

E.T. hasn’t phoned home, at least not yet.

After considerable excitement in the planet hunting community about a star 1,500 light years from Earth that dimmed substantially at irregular periods, the SETI Institute decided to take a closer look from October 15 to October 30. They didn’t find anything of interest. “The observations presented here indicate no evidence for persistent technology-related signals,” concludes a short research paper posted on arXiv on Thursday.

Astronomers have no good answer for why NASA’s Kepler Spacecraft, when observing the star KIC 8462582, found that its brightness dims by 20 percent irregularly, and for as long as 80 days. A number of possible explanations have been put forth for this dimming, such instrument error or perhaps a large constellation of comets that were disrupted by a passing star. None seems satisfying, however.

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments