Alien Signal or Not?

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 sky-eye 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 sky-eye telescope they picked up three signals which

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

00:39signals aren't usually produced by nature but humans use them a lot in satellites, TVs, cell

00:46radar. So when scientists see them coming from space they think there's a possibility that there

00:53could be some form of intelligent life form that may have been sending them. Maybe we were just

00:58sent an intergalactic what you up to or we intercepted some alien daytime TV. Either way

01:06there's a possibility when we see narrowband signals that it comes from intelligent life.

01:11The story quickly started making headlines around the world and appearing all over social media

01:16before Dan Wertheimer, an American SETI or search for extraterrestrial intelligence scientist who

01:23worked closely with the Chinese scientists in finding the signals, came out to say that they

01:27were almost certainly not from aliens but from human technology instead. But how can Wertheimer

01:34for sure? Well Wertheimer said to us that the big problem with the gigantic radio telescopes

01:41that scientists use to intercept all of these radio signals is that they're so sensitive

01:47they can measure radio signals that are beamed from earth from light years away. Now that may

01:53be amazing for finding things from distance but it means that they're also incredibly susceptible to

01:58the zillions of homegrown signals that we produce every second. Now some of these signals even to a

02:06trained scientist could fool them and appear like they genuinely came from deep space. We call these

02:13errant signals RFIs or radio frequency interference and Wertheimer says that if you haven't been

02:21studying them for that long then it means that you're much more likely to get hoodwinked by a

02:27subtle interference effect. Despite the error having spread around the world the scientists

02:33need not feel too embarrassed. This recent false alarm is far from the first time that alien hunting

02:40scientists have been led astray by noise from chattering humans. In 2019 for instance astronomers

02:47thought they spotted a narrowband radio signal beamed to earth from Proxima Centauri which is

02:53the nearest star to our sun but further studies made two years later revealed that it was most

02:59likely from malfunctioning human equipment. Another famous set of signals which bewitched

03:06scientists between 2011 and 2014 was also supposed to have come from aliens until

03:14scientists realized that it was actually made by their fellow researchers microwaving their lunches.

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