Two Stars of Interest to SETI Researchers Are Kind of Close To Each Other

So in space news today, we have word of a SETI candidate signal -- a possible alien civilization -- in the star system HD 164595. Candidate signals are discovered all the time, by the way, so it doesn't mean it's the real thing.

I had some further thoughts on this, but here's a link if you haven't heard about it already:
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=36248
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_164595

It got peoples' attention when they mentioned that the signal is so strong that it would require a Kardashev Type II civilization to produce that much power if it's beaming in all directions. Less, if it's aimed in our direction. A Kardashev Type II civilization would be one vastly more powerful than we are and probably also vastly larger. Not vast like the difference between the most powerful nation on Earth and the weakest, but much more than that.

On the other hand, it also points to the possibility that it's a natural phenomenon or a signal coming from humans on Earth or one of our satellites in orbit. Experts are not freaking out. As explained here, this signal is like millions of other candidate SETI signals that have been discovered and never reported in the news:
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=80193

This probably explains the "mystery" of why the people in Russia who observed this last year didn't immediately report it to the world in a very public way. The reason is because their team includes some very experienced SETI researchers and they presumably know that what they've found is not all that unusual so far and is very likely not aliens.

So it's probably nothing, but at the risk of touching off a worldwide panic, I wish to share one little fact with the world that might be interesting. HD 164595, the star this signal seems to have come from, is kind of close to another one of interest. That other star is KIC 8462852.

KIC 8462852 made news in 2015 because light from the star dimmed to a surprisingly large extent and in a way that doesn't seem to make sense. Some people suggested it might be due to construction of very large structures in space by aliens. This is because if the dimming is caused by an object in that star system blocking the light, the object would have to be vastly larger than a planet to block the light that much.

The two stars are kind of close in the sky. If you could draw a square across the sky barely big enough to enclose both stars, the square would be less than 1% of the sky. But that's how close they look from Earth. One star is about 94 light years away from us and the other is about 1,480 light years away from us. They are about 1,398 light years apart. Our galaxy is over 100,000 light years across, so again, those two stars are in the same one or two percent of the galaxy. Of course, 1,398 light years is an enormous distance even if it is in the same part of the galaxy. But if either one of these two things is actually caused by aliens, then the aliens almost certainly have vastly higher technology than we do. If they have the energy to produce that signal or the ability to build a structure in space that large, 1,398 light years is not at all an impossible distance, especially if they colonized hundreds of star systems in between over a long period of time. Humans could colonize an area of space that large even with the technology we have now, (including ion drives) though it would take thousands of years. If such a civilization exists, it may have been there for a very long time. It also may be able to travel between stars much faster than we know how to.

There is still every reason to believe that the signal coming from the direction of HD 164595 is something mundane like a solar flare from that star or a secret military satellite in Earth orbit downloading data to Earth as it passed over the radio telescope that detected the signal. There is still every reason to believe that the dimming of the light in KIC 8462852 may be caused by a swarm of comets or something not involving aliens. But if both these things actually are caused by aliens, they may be caused by the same civilization of aliens and these two data points give us a glimpse of how large their civilization is and where it is. The area in question is at least 1,400 light years across with its nearest edge not more than 94.4 light years from us. It lies roughly in the same direction as the center of the galaxy.

Just posting this because I suspect most people won't have noticed how close those two stars are. If we get any other data suggesting any of this might really be aliens, astronomers could start looking at other stars in that area for any additional anomalies. Or they could start looking now if they want to.