Jay Manifold offers his assessment of a potential SETI discovery.

Interesting analysis. But what if it's not a planet they are hearing? I note he did say 'or object' but what if it is an object not near a sun?

Speculation is fun but we'll have to wait for further study. But I'll admit I'd be elated if it is "ET". :)

Such astronomy as I once knew is way out of date, but could it be an old neutron star in a dust cloud?

Space.com later had a story on this -

SETI@home Signal Story Sees Much More Than Meets the Eye

Short version: It is worth further investigation, but it is WAY too early to get your hopes up. The New Scientist contained misquotes, took some things out of context, and just got others plain wrong.

It's a bit like the story of the "super earth" - a large planet that has a 3 day orbit around a star hotter than ours. Aside from the small temperature problems and assuming it truly is rocky, it probably is tidally locked and is subject to massive tidal stress, probably generates a great deal of internal heat as well (I would suspect Io is geologically quiet by comparison), would likely be subject to great differentiation due to the much larger mass versus earth, the surface gravity would be very high, it couldn't have a breathable atmosphere, etc.

For all that, it and the three other planets discovered recently were dubbed "earthlike" by our local news. Yeesh.

Just noticed this over at Cosmic Log.:

Space signal stirs speculation

There's a bit more in more recent Cosmic Log posts, but this one involves the New Scientist interview itself. The reporter got things REALLY wrong. They will "probably" look for the signal again if it isn't bumped off the prioirity list, but it isn't considered significant at all. This is even more negative than was suggested by the SPACE.COM article.

Checking in from vacation ... thanks for the mention, Rand. As "VR" noted above, the meaning of "Earthlike" is being stretched well beyond the breaking point for the sake of a good story. I note that the analysis I performed could have been carried out by any reporter with half an hour to spare. For some idea of why they don't (short version: they don't like to spoil good stories), have a look at Dr Andrew Cline's page on Media/Political Bias.

Yay!! This is so exciting. I have a old dual p3 600 machine in my computer room that all it does is pound on the Seti at home project files all day long. I'm up over 300 project files completed.

Frankly, I'm of the opinion the chance of success in SETI is so low that running a program like that is a waste of electrical power. But if it's personally rewarding then don't let me dissuade you.