You better get into all of your games and save them, do your back ups and run into your doomsday bunker - because scientists writing in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific have found unusual signals coming from a group of stars that are "signals probably from extraterrestrial intelligence".
The scientists said that these signals "have exactly the shape of a signal predicted in the previous publication and are therefore in agreement with this [extraterrestrial intelligence] hypothesis". Their paper is called "Discovery of peculiar periodic spectral modulations in a small fraction of solar type stars," which talks about their hypothesis that these signals are from some form of ETI, or alien intelligence.
E.F. Borra and E. Trottier, the paper's authors, write: "The fact that they are only found in a very small fraction of stars within a narrow spectral range centered near the spectral type of the sun is also in agreement with the ETI hypothesis". They added: "At this stage, this hypothesis needs to be confirmed with further work. 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".
TechCrunch reports that the signals are a set of repeated bursts that seem to be aliens communicating with us, alerting us of their existence. But then we have Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute, who told Astronomy Magazine that the astronomy community is abuzz.
Shostak said: "Apparently several - more than three or four - referees have been disinclined to see this published. I am quite skeptical, in particular of the data processing that can take spectrally sampled data, and infer time variations. So I'd be a little careful".
The authors did add that they took a few leaps in their conclusions, but they still stand by their work, adding: "This is a complex and highly speculative issue and we shall not delve on it".