spotted 'mysterious pulse of light' from direction of newly-discovered '2nd Earth' two years ago

Daily Mail ^ | 1st October 2010 | Niall Firth

[tlb]

An astronomer picked up a mysterious pulse of light coming from the direction of the newly discovered Earth-like planet almost two years ago, it has emerged.

Dr Ragbir Bhathal, a scientist at the University of Western Sydney, picked up the odd signal in December 2008, long before it was announced that the star Gliese 581 has habitable planets in orbit around it.

Dr Bhathal had been sweeping the skies when he discovered a 'suspicious' signal from an area of the galaxy that holds the newly-discovered Gliese 581g.

The remarkable coincidence adds another layer of mystery to the announcement last night that scientists had discovered another planet in the system: Gliese 581g - the most Earth-like planet ever found.

Dr Bhathal's discovery had come just months before astronomers announced that they had found a similar, slightly less habitable planet around the same star 20 light years away. This planet was called Gliese 581e.

He went on: 'We found this very sharp signal, sort of a laser lookalike thing which is the sort of thing we’re looking for - a very sharp spike. And that is what we found. So that was the excitement about the whole thing.'

For months after his discovery Dr Bhathal scanned the skies for a second signal to see whether it was just a glitch in his instrumentation but his search came to nothing.

But the discovery of Earth-like planets around Gliese 581 - both 581e and 581d, which was in the habitable zone - has also caught the public imagination.

Documentary-maker RDF and social-networking site Bebo used a radio telescope in Ukraine to send a powerful focused beam of information - 500 messages from the public in the form of radiowaves - to Gliese 581.

[TheOldLady]

[whines] Why do we have to be gray? Why can’t we be a light milk chocolate? Gray, ugh.

Oops. I’m already Grayist.

[BenLurkin]

Why can’t we be a light milk chocolate?

Hmmmm.....

[dragnet2]

[Jupiter and Saturn, which would almost certainly be red dwarf stars without the nearby presence of our sun.]

LOL. What Southern orifice did you pull that out of

Outside the fact they orbit the sun due to gravitational influences, I was wondering what the correlation was there.

[TheOldLady]

Halle who?

Add 40 years and some frizzy hair, and that could be me! Oh, and glasses. And bushy eyebrows. And... oh heck.

[The Cajun]

We found this very sharp signal, sort of a laser lookalike thing which is the sort of thing we’re looking for - a very sharp spike. And that is what we found.
For months after his discovery Dr Bhathal scanned the skies for a second signal to see whether it was just a glitch in his instrumentation but his search came to nothing.

Take it from an old electronic tech, very sensitive equipment, sharp spike, no repeat = glitch 90% probability.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

Christ said, “And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd “ (John 10:16).

[Ole Okie]

Astronomers observed flashes of light, too - on Mars, just before the invasion in “Ware of the Worlds”.

It only took a few hours for the Martian invaders to land in New Jersey. Those flashes of light were the rockets taking off. Obviously very fast rockets.

And the canals.....ah, the canals on Mars.

[Beowulf9]

What we need to do is push the planet out a little bit farther, till it’s not tidal locked and starts to spin!!!

[MissDairyGoodnessVT]

maybe they need someone to make beer run for their kegger party