ET aficionados have had their hopes dashed once again as SETI International has announced that their study of vaunted 'alien megastructure' star KIC 8462852 has yielded no signs of an advanced civilization.
The mysterious star made headlines back in October when a scientific paper noted strange light signals emanating from it and suggested that they could be caused by an 'alien megastructure.'
In response, the SETI organization turned their attention to the enigmatic area and performed a series of tests to look for artificial signals coming from KIC 8462852.
"We found no evidence of an advanced civilization beaming intentional laser signals toward Earth," said Douglas Vakoch, President of SETI International, in a press release.
An additional search for radio waves coming from the star also produced no tangible signs of intelligent life residing around KIC 8462852.
With these two tests having yielded little in the way of ET indicators, SETI appears ready to close the book on the possibility that the star is the home of an alien race.
"The hypothesis of an alien megastructure around KIC 8462852 is rapidly crumbling apart," Vakoch said.
Fortunately, billions of stars throughout the universe have yet to be so closely examined, so perhaps someday the right combination of looking and listening will finally find the intelligent life that many believe to be 'out there' waiting to be discovered.
For more on SETI's study of KIC 8462852, Coast Insiders can check out Seth Shostak's appearance on the program back in November.
Source: The Guardian