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| China's Sky Eye Telescope Claimed Successfully Capture Alien Signal |
Beijing - China claims to have captured trace signals from a distant alien civilization through the "Sky Eye" telescope, which is very large. Sky Eye is the largest radio telescope in the world which has the official name Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST).
Sky Eye began scanning space for radio signals that could indicate extraterrestrial life in 2019 and began filtering that data in 2020. Researchers said seeing two suspicious narrow bands, they were radio signals.
Then, in 2022, a targeted survey of known exoplanets found another strange narrow band radio signal, bringing the number to three. Since the signal is a narrow band radio wave normally used only by human planes and satellites, it could have been generated by alien technology.
However, the scientists say their findings are preliminary and should be scrutinized carefully until the analysis is complete. "These are several different narrow-band electromagnetic signals from the past, and the team is currently working on further investigations," Zhang Tongjie, Chief Scientist at the China Extraterrestrial Civilization Research Group at Beijing Normal University, told Science and Technology Daily. Chinese astronomers want to rule out radio interference because it has notoriously deterred alien-hunting scientists in the past. In 2019, astronomers looked at signals beamed to Earth from Proxima Centauri, the closest star system to our sun (about 4.2 light-years away) and home to at least one potentially habitable planet.
The signal is a narrow band of radio waves typically associated with man-made objects, which led scientists to suspect it might be from alien technology. Live Science previously reported that a new study released two years later, however, showed that the signal was most likely generated by malfunctioning human technology.
Similarly, another well-known signal chain that was once thought to be from aliens, was detected between 2011 and 2014. It turned out to be actually created by scientists microwaved heating their lunches.
To that end, Tonjie added, his team plans to conduct repeated observations of the strange signals to conclusively rule out radio interference and obtain as much information as possible about them. "We hope [the FAST telescope] will be the first to discover and confirm the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations," he said.
The signal isn't the first time scientists have been confused by radio waves from space. In August 1977, a SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) search conducted by Ohio State University's Big Ear telescope found extremely powerful electromagnetic explosions, one minute long, blazing at frequencies scientists suspect could be used by alien civilizations.
After seeing the signal on the printed data, the scientist working with the telescope that night, Jerry Ehman, hurriedly wrote "Wow!" with a red pen on the page, providing a well-known name detection. The follow-up searches in the same region of space all returned empty-handed.
Subsequent research suggested that the signal may have come from a sun-like star located in the constellation Sagittarius, Live Science previously reported. However, the source of the signal is still a mystery.
The discrepancy between the scope and age of the universe and the lack of intelligent life forms beyond Earth, called the Fermi Paradox, has long plagued scientists. This paradox is named after the physicist who proposed this theory and Nobel Prize winner Enrico Fermi.