Aliens from 234 stars may be trying to reach us: Stephen Hawking's alien hunting mission

If you are socially savvy, you might have a platoon of friends. But do you have 234 of them?

Take heart. You certainly may be having 234 alien friends trying to talk to you!

Astronomers found recently that 234 mysterious signals from faraway stars might be from various alien species trying to reach out to us, said a new study published Thursday by Laval University.

Through the Apache Point Observatory, scientists analyzed the spectra of 2.5 million stars. Among these, they identified 234 giving off strange signals, which "have exactly the shape of an ETI [Extraterrestrial Intelligence] signal" they said. Each of these stars was also "relatively comparable" to the sun.

As the authors say in their paper: "Although unlikely, there is also a possibility that the signals are due to highly peculiar chemical compositions in a small fraction of galactic halo stars."

However, how close can these be to signals? There might be so many reasons behind the origin of the signals, that as the authors explain in their abstract: "this hypothesis needs to be confirmed with further work."

The Breakthrough Listen Initiative, funded by physicist Stephen Hawking and scientific philanthropist Yuri Milner, investigates intelligent, alien life. So far it remains sceptical about the scientific study regarding 234 star signals, giving it a 0 out of 1 in the Rio scale. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," it noted. Still, more research is ongoing.

Stellar oddities are not always due to aliens, but could be due to other strange phenomena. For instance, in 1967, a graduate student in astronomy was excited when he discovered a pulsing radio signal that seemed to be sent from "intelligent life." The signal was nicknamed LGM-1, for "little green men." However, the signal turned out to be not from Alien life, but from the first pulsar.

Last October, Yale University, astronomers as well as other schools, used NASA's Kepler Space Telescope to examine the star KIC 8462852. They found that its light patterns "were consistent with large orbiting masses that blocked out some of the star's light." Scientists found that quite astounding.

"We spent a long time trying to convince ourselves this wasn't real. We just weren't able to," said Ben Montet, a Caltech astronomer who co-authored the study. "None of the considered phenomena can alone explain the observations."