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 could have

00:05picked up trace radio communications from intelligent aliens, but it turns out it may

00:11have just been a case of mixed signals.

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

00:22China's gigantic 500 meter aperture fast or sky-eye telescope, they picked up three signals

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

00:37Now narrow band radio signals aren't usually produced by nature, but humans use them a lot

00:43in satellites, TVs, cell phones, radar.

00:47So 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.

00:58Maybe we were just sent an intergalactic what are you up to, or we intercepted some alien

01:03daytime TV.

01:04Either way, there's a possibility when we see narrow band signals that it comes from

01:10intelligent life.

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

01:16media before Dan Wertheimer, an American SETI or Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

01:22scientist who worked closely with the Chinese scientists in finding the signals, came out

01:27to say that they were almost certainly not from aliens, but from human technology instead.

01:33But how can Wertheimer know for sure?

01:35Well Wertheimer said to us that the big problem with the gigantic radio telescopes that scientists

01:42use to intercept all of these radio signals is that they're so sensitive they can measure

01:48radio signals that are beamed from Earth from light years away.

01:53Now that may be amazing for finding things from distance, but it means that they're also

01:57incredibly susceptible to the zillions of homegrown signals that we produce every second.

02:03Now some of these signals, even to a trained scientist, could fool them and appear like they genuinely

02:10came from deep space.

02:12We call these errant signals RFIs or radio frequency interference and Wertheimer says that if you

02:20haven't been studying them for that long, then it means that you're much more likely to

02:25get 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.

02:45In 2019 for instance, astronomers thought they spotted a narrowband radio signal beamed to

02:50Earth from Proxima Centauri, which is the nearest star to our Sun.

02:55But further studies, made two years later, revealed that it was most likely from malfunctioning human

03:02equipment. Another famous set of signals which bewitched scientists between 2011 and 2014 was also

03:10supposed to have come from aliens, until scientists realised that it was actually made by their fellow

03:17researchers microwaving their lunches.

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