That's the number we can detect. Either intelligent life is extraordinarily rare, and we're the only local example, or it's fairly common and we just haven't detected it yet. I'd be much more surprised if we only discovered a single intelligent neighbor than if we discover a few hundred of them.
Or it's common, but it doesn't last once it starts developing the technology required to broadcast its presence, so we're all separated by time. We certainly don't appear likely to last very long, as a broadcasting species.
We are in the spotlight of a weird alien reality show?
That would explain this election year
More like the last 20-25, I think.
If the universe is a simulation, it might have a bug.
I want to know if our own star is also sending out these "peculiar periodic spectral modulations"??? If our own star is doing this as well, it could indicate that our solar system is a part of some type of "network", and these 234 stars would make excellent candidates in the search for intelligent life.
Our star does oscillate and we have studied its oscillations in great depth within asteroseismology (specifically helioseismology). But I'm overall doubtful of the conclusions of this paper, specifically the Fourier transforms they show don't appear special to me -- it looks like granulation background you get in effectively every star (though they do say they subtracted a "smoothed spectrum").
Out of 2.5 million analyzed mind you. Still seems surprising though.
Sure, but they're all approximately the same spectral type as our star; how many of those 2.5 million were also the same type?