The search for alien life has been a long endeavor by thousands of scientists around the world. Many as they are, conclusive evidence regarding the matter remains elusive.
But outer space is vast and it is possible that among those distant stars and planet thrives a civilization that may be far advanced than ours. As such, the search continues and astronomers are peering across the sky to find clues that would lead to a concrete answer.
Star Clusters Exhibiting Strange Activities That May Be Cause By Alien Life
Among these researchers are Ermanno Borra and Eric Trottier from Laval University, Canada. They claim that a cluster of stars is exhibiting strange pulses that they said may be an indication of extraterrestrial life.
To investigate this cluster, the duo used the eight-food wide telescope called the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to observe some 2.5 million distant stars. Their investigation led them to believe that 234 of those stars are showing anomalies and that the pulses are akin to lasers being flashed from deep space, said New Scientist.
"We consider several possibilities, such as rotational transitions in molecules, rapid pulsations...and signals generated by Extraterrestrial Intelligence (ETI)," stated the two. They added that the fact that these pulses are found in a very small fraction of stars in a narrow spectral range centered near the spectral type of the sun indicates that ETI could possibly be causing the peculiar cosmic activity.
Researchers From Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence To Investigate Star Cluster
However, Borra and Trottier's conclusion to their observation have been met with a wave of criticism in the scientific community and called the study ambiguous at best, reported Business Insider. Despite this, the Breakthrough Listen Project, funded by Stephen Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, will be investigating the star cluster as every avenue that shows signs of alien life is worth looking in to.
"It's an incredibly profound subject - and of course that's why many of us devote our lives to the field and put so much energy into trying to answer these questions," said Andrew Siemion, director of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Research. "But you can't make such definitive statements about detections unless you've exhausted every possible means of follow-up."
The researchers of the project said that while the possibility of ETI is still on the table it's the last thing that they expect to find. Borra, on the other hand, is still excited that others are joining in on the investigation to find out what is really going on in that cluster of stars.
