Did China's Telescope Hear Alien Activity?

Live Science

Chinese scientists' claims that their "Sky Eye" telescope could have picked up signals from intelligent aliens have been met with skepticism by an American colleague.

Transcript

00:00This month, Chinese scientists claimed that their gigantic SkyEye telescope

00:05could have picked up trace radio communications from intelligent aliens.

00:09But it turns out it may have just been a case of mixed signals.

00:17So on June the 14th, Chinese astronomers came out with claims that while they were using China's

00:23gigantic 500 meter aperture Fast or SkyEye telescope, they picked up three signals which

00:31they think could have come from intelligent aliens. One in 2019 and two in 2022. Now,

00:38narrowband radio signals aren't usually produced by nature, but humans use them a lot in satellites,

00:44TVs, cell phones, radar. So when scientists see them coming from space, they think there's a

00:52possibility that there could be some form of intelligent life form that may have been sending

00:57them. Maybe we were just sent an intergalactic what you up to, or we intercepted some alien

01:03daytime TV. Either way, there's a possibility when we see narrowband signals that it comes

01:09from intelligent life. The story quickly started making headlines around the world and appearing

01:15all over social media before Dan Wertheimer and American SETI, or Search for Extraterrestrial

01:21Intelligence scientists, who worked closely with the Chinese scientists in finding the signals,

01:26came out to say that they were almost certainly not from aliens, but from human technology instead.

01:32But how can Wertheimer know for sure? Well, Wertheimer said to us that the big problem with

01:39the gigantic radio telescopes that scientists use to intercept all of these radio signals

01:45is that they're so sensitive they can measure radio signals that are beamed from Earth from

01:52light years away. Now that may be amazing for finding things from distance, but it means that

01:57they're also incredibly susceptible to the zillions of homegrown signals that we produce

02:02every second. Now some of these signals, even to a trained scientist, could fool them and appear like

02:09they genuinely came from deep space. We call these errant signals RFIs, or radio frequency

02:17interference, and Wertheimer says that if you haven't been studying them for that long,

02:23then it means that you're much more likely to get hoodwinked by a subtle interference effect.

02:29Despite the error having spread around the world, the scientists need not feel too embarrassed.

02:35This recent false alarm is far from the first time that alien hunting scientists have been

02:41led astray by noise from chattering humans. In 2019, for instance, astronomers thought they

02:48spotted a narrowband radio signal beamed to Earth from Proxima Centauri, which is the nearest star

02:54to our sun. But further studies made two years later revealed that it was most likely from

03:00malfunctioning human equipment. Another famous set of signals, which bewitched scientists between

03:072011 and 2014, was also supposed to have come from aliens, until scientists realised

03:15that it was actually made by their fellow researchers microwaving their lunches.

Category

Transcript

Recommended