In search of extraterrestrial life, researchers discovered an “intriguing” radio signal emanating from the star system closest to the sun, according to a press report.
The Guardian reports that researchers in the Breakthrough Listen project, which is “the largest scientific research program ever to find evidence of civilizations beyond Earth,” discovered a 980 MHz signal that appears to come from the star system Proxima Centauri, a little more more than four light-years from Earth.
One of the researchers behind the project, Andrew Siemion of the University of California, Berkeley, found it difficult to describe the source of the signal.
A rocky planet orbiting Proxima Centauri could support liquid water (artist description). (Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Bacon (STSc))
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“It has certain properties that caused it to pass many of our checks, and we still can’t explain it,” Siemion told Scientific American about the 980 MHz signal.
Fox News contacted NASA with a request for comment.
“We don’t know of any natural way to compress electromagnetic energy into a single frequency basket,” Siemion added, noting that there could be some natural explanations behind it. But “for now, the only source we know about is technology.”
The next Centauri b is the closest confirmed exoplanet to Earth, 4.2 light-years away. In January, researchers discovered the presence of a possible two exoplanets, a “Super-Earth”, which also orbits Proxima Centauri.
Although the news was not published in scientific journals, a person from the astronomy community told The Guardian that the signal is “the first serious candidate for the” Wow! “.
The “Wow!” Signal, discovered in 1977, was “a very strong, unexpected signal” discovered by a large radio telescope known as the Big Ear, NASA notes. It was heard only once and in 1998, Urechea Mare was demolished.
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This new signal was called BLC1, for Breakthrough Listen. It was originally discovered in April 2019 by the 210-foot Parkes radio telescope in Sydney, Australia.
The Breakthrough Listen project, which collaborates with the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite in Search of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), detects radio signals in space constantly. It often finds technological devices, such as spacecraft, satellites, GPS systems, or other celestial instances, such as those from the sun or those coming from beyond the solar system.
However, the $ 100 million project, funded by Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner, sees the importance of this signal given that it appears to come directly from Proxima Centauri and the fact that it “derives”, changing so infrequently. , fascinated researchers.
“We would expect the signal to drop in frequency like a trombone,” Penn State University researcher Sofia Sheikh told Scientific American. “What we see instead is like a slide whistle – the frequency increases.”
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Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, said the signal may not come from Proxima Centauri, but perhaps beyond it and happens to align with the stellar system, an interesting finding, however, among other possible explanations.
“Yes, as long as we don’t know yet, we should consider the alien hypothesis viable,” Shostak wrote in a blog post. “After all, any SETI detection will be difficult when we do it for the first time … there will be a lot of apprehension calls meant to calm everyone who is too eager. But it is reasonable to expect that one day one among these suspicious signals to be, indeed, be the sought-after proof of intelligence in another world. “
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So far, more than 4,500 exoplanets have been discovered, only a small part considering that it has the properties to contain life.
A study published in November suggested that the galaxy may actually contain 300 million planets capable of supporting life.