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 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 narrowband radio signals aren't usually produced by nature, but humans use them a lot

00:43in satellites, TVs, cell phones, radar, so when scientists see them coming from space

00:51they think there's a possibility that there could be some form of intelligent life form

00:56that may have been sending them. Maybe we were just sent an intergalactic what you up to,

01:01or we intercepted some alien daytime tv. Either way there's a possibility when we see narrowband

01:08signals that it comes from intelligent life. The story quickly started making headlines around the

01:14world and appearing all over social media before Dan Wertheimer, an American SETI or search for

01:20extraterrestrial intelligence scientist who worked closely with the Chinese scientists in finding

01:25the signals, came out to say that they were almost certainly not from aliens but from human technology

01:32instead. But 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 is that

01:45they're so sensitive they can measure radio 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 incredibly

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

02:05even to a trained scientist could fool them and appear like they genuinely came from deep space. We call

02:13these errant 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 subtle

02:28interference effect. Despite the error having spread around the world the scientists need not feel too

02:34embarrassed. This 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 spotted a

02:48narrowband radio signal beamed to earth from Proxima Centauri which is the nearest star to our sun.

02:54But 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 realized that it was actually made by their fellow

03:17researchers microwaving their lunches.

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