China could have received a message from an extraterrestrial civilization using its FAST ground-based telescope. The news was revealed in a report by Science and Technology Daily, the official newspaper of China’s Beijing-based Ministry of Science and Technology, which was immediately deleted without any clarification. Not before many others echoed the publication.
Sky Eye is a 500-meter-diameter telescope based in China’s Guizhou province. It is the largest radio telescope in the world (it is capable of scanning twice the area of the sky covered by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, the previous record holder for the world’s largest single aperture radio telescope). And, it seems, it could have detected unusual electromagnetic signals that scientists say could have extraterrestrial origins.
The narrowband electromagnetic signals detected by FAST differ from those previously captured and are being further investigated by the team, according to the report, citing Zhang Tonjie , chief scientist of an extraterrestrial civilization search team co-founded by North Korea Normal University. Beijing, the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the University of California, Berkeley.
The team detected two sets of suspicious signals in 2020 while processing data collected in 2019, and found another suspicious signal in 2022 from exoplanet target observation data, Zhang said, according to the report.
Why has the report been deleted?
The reason why the document has been removed from the web newspaper of the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology is unknown, although the news had already started to trend on the Weibo social network and was picked up by other media outlets around the world.
Astronomers from Peking University have discovered “several cases of possible technological traces and extraterrestrial civilizations from beyond Earth,” said the report before being removed from the web.
Could be radio interference
Since the signals are narrowband radio waves normally used by human aircraft and satellites, they could have been produced by alien technology. However, the scientists say their findings are preliminary and should be viewed with caution until the analysis is complete.
“These are several different narrowband electromagnetic signals from the past, and the team is currently working on further investigation. The possibility that the suspected signal is some kind of radio interference is also very high, and needs to be further confirmed and ruled out. This can be a long process ,” the report also said.
Could it be an alien communication?
Currently, life beyond Earth has never been found, but this does not mean that the universe does not have life other than on Earth, according to NASA.
“While clear signs of life have never been detected, the possibility of extraterrestrial biology, the scientific logic behind it, has become increasingly plausible,” the US space agency continues.
And it is that the apparent lack of intelligent life forms beyond Earth, what we know as the Fermi paradox, has worried scientists for a long time. How can it be that no extraterrestrial civilization has visited us with the billions of galaxies, stars and planets in the universe?
Referencia: Science and Technology Daily / NASA
