E.T. hasn’t phoned home, at least not yet.

After considerable excitement in the planet hunting community about a star 1,500 light years from Earth that dimmed substantially at irregular periods, the SETI Institute decided to take a closer look from October 15 to October 30. They didn’t find anything of interest. “The observations presented here indicate no evidence for persistent technology-related signals,” concludes a short research paper posted on arXiv on Thursday.

Astronomers have no good answer for why NASA’s Kepler Spacecraft, when observing the star KIC 8462582, found that its brightness dims by 20 percent irregularly and for as long as 80 days. A number of possible explanations have been put forth for this dimming, such as instrument error or perhaps a large constellation of comets that were disrupted by a passing star. None seems satisfying, however.

Understandably, the scenario which has gotten by far the most attention is the possibility of an “alien megastructure,” that is, an alien-built structure such as a Dyson sphere built around the star to collect its energy through millions of solar panels, or a habitat ring world.

Nevertheless when the astronomers at the SETI Institute used their Allen Telescope Array, which consists of 42 antennas in the Cascade Range in Northern California, they didn’t find anything. Instead of looking for “hailing signals” from a possible civilization, SETI looked for “broadband” signals characteristic of intense microwave beams that might plausibly power spacecraft flying around the star system. Thus the initial survey does not provide conclusive proof that an alien civilization exists around the star.

Further surveys will continue, but don't get your hopes up.

“The history of astronomy tells us that every time we thought we had found a phenomenon due to the activities of extraterrestrials, we were wrong,” said Institute astronomer Seth Shostak. “But although it’s quite likely that this star’s strange behavior is due to nature, not aliens, it’s only prudent to check such things out.”