The extraterrestrial signal caught in China was most likely a mistake
Last week the world news flashed that China has detected signals from extraterrestrial civilizations using the giant Sky Eye telescope. This was reported in one of the state publications, but later removed.
China then caught a narrowband electromagnetic signal at 140,604 MHz. Such accuracy usually does not occur naturally. The telescope was aimed at the exoplanet Kepler 438 b, which, according to scientists, has the conditions for life.
However, the message about the signal from extraterrestrial civilizations quickly disappeared from the site, and Chinese astronomers began to “put out” the effect of the hot news, informs The New York Times.
“The possibility that the suspicious signal is some kind of radio interference is also very high, and it needs to be further confirmed or ruled out. This may be a long process,” said Zhang Tong-Jie, the chief scientist of China ET Civilization Research Group.
“These signals are from radio interference; they are due to radio pollution from earthlings, not from E.T.,” said Dan Vertimer of the University of California, Berkeley.
In the United States half a century ago, the possibility of finding extraterrestrial civilizations was discussed. NASA then held a workshop and published a 253-page report entitled The Cyclops Project. A group of scientists has come to the conclusion that in order to search for alien signals, it is necessary to build the Cyclops, a huge set of radio telescopes with 1,000 antennas with a diameter of 100 meters. At that time, the project would have cost $10 billion.
The Cyclops were never built. However, for half a century, SETI, a project to search for extraterrestrial civilizations, has captured promising signals and tracked them to orbital satellites, microwaves, and other terrestrial sources. Most recently, a signal that seemed to be coming from Proxima Centauri was traced to radio interference in Australia.
Now Chinese scientists have faced a false alarm. “There will be more,” warn American astronomers. All the signals detected, SETI, were created by our civilization. Currently, rising radio pollution and interference from satellite constellations make it difficult to search for extraterrestrial communications, but this work continues.