China claims in a report that its giant Sky Eye telescope could have received signals from an advanced alien civilization.
The researchers identified what they called “suspicious” signals from space as part of a search for evidence of aliens, and work is underway to determine whether they could be.
Detected by the Sky Eye telescope
The Chinese Radio Telescope eye of heaven, is the most sensitive listening device in the world. It is made up of 4,450 individual panels that scan the sky, detecting the whispers of the universe. It is located in a natural depression the size of 30 football fields. Sky Eye has a signal collection area twice the size of the famous Arecibo, Puerto Rico radio telescope.
Three suspicious signals captured by Sky Eye
Astronomers at Peking Normal University have discovered “several cases of possible technological traces of extraterrestrial civilizations,” according to a report published Tuesday (June 14) in Journal of Science and Technologythe official journal of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China.
The report was removed from the Science and Technology Daily website, for no known reason, but the news had already started to trend on the social network Weibo and was picked up by other media, including state-owned.
Sky Eye scanned deep space in 2019 for radio signals that could indicate extraterrestrial life. Examining this data in 2020, the researchers said they detected two potentially artificial, narrowband radio signals.
In 2022, a search for exoplanets also found a strange narrowband radio signal, bringing the count up to three strange signals, which could come from technology created by intelligent extraterrestrial life.
The signals are narrowband radio waves normally only used by planes and satellites, so they may have been produced by alien technology.
The Chinese scientists caution that their findings are preliminary and should be viewed with caution until the analysis is complete. The team is investigating them in depth.