A filmmaker claims that scientists scouring the skies for signs of intelligent alien civilizations have found an alien technology that will soon be revealed to the public. So is this the real deal? Have we found aliens? Is it time to rip each other’s head off and party with the shore inside?
In 2019, Australia’s Parkes radio telescope took a look at our nearest neighbor, Proxima Centauri, in order to study stellar flares. The following year, an intern at Oxford University’s Breakthrough Listen project, which aims to search for evidence of life beyond Earth, found an unusual signal in the data that persisted for several hours.
There was reason to be (somewhat) excited about the signal, but also plenty of reason to be skeptical. We’ve suggested many alien signal candidates in the past, from Wow! cue for potential heat signatures from Dyson Spheres. As much as we all wish they were extraterrestrials, so far natural explanations for such phenomena have always been found, e.g. hot dogs.
However, it was a narrow-band signal at 982 MHz, which is not produced by known natural sources, and the signal appeared to fade away as observations moved away from the source, suggesting (at first) that it might not originate from Earth. , or.
“The event does not lie within the frequency range of any known local radio frequency interference (RFI) and has many characteristics consistent with a putative transmitter located in another star system,” the first paper to delve into the signal, called BLC -1. is explained.
This piqued the interest of scientists looking for signs of alien life, who investigated the signal further. According to Dr Andrew Siemion of Breakthrough Listen, the signal was “undoubtedly one of the most intriguing signals we have seen to date”. However, further analysis by other teams places it in local interference with the data.
“We find that blc1 is not an extraterrestrial technological signature, but rather an electronic intermodulation product of local, time-varying interlopers linked to the observation cadence,” a team explained in a second paper. “We find dozens of cases of radio interference with blc1-like morphology at frequencies harmonically related to common clock oscillators.”
It was likely a technical signature, just one that came from humans. “It’s highly unlikely that it’s actually from a transmitter on Proxima Centauri,” Siemion added at the time.
Extensive subsequent analysis concluded that BLC-1 most likely originated from terrestrial radio frequency interference.
Dr. Andrew Siemion
So the end of the story? Not according to filmmaker Simon Holland, who claims to have received a tip from Siemion that the signal is still of interest.
“The amazing piece of new information that this EU radio telescope administrator shared with me is that by analyzing the SETI data at home, five very likely candidates were found,” Holland said in a video. “These were unusual signatures that could—we didn’t know at the time—be a technological signature of a non-human intelligence. A real noise from a planet somewhere in our galaxy that was obviously using technology.”
According to Holland, who also spoke to the Daily Mirror, several teams are still investigating the signals, with particular interest in BLC-1.
Holland claims that teams will soon be ready to release details about the candidates, possibly in the next month. It sure looks like a case of crossed wires, though, rather than an alien signal.
There have been no re-discoveries or other developments related to BLC-1 that change the conclusions in our 2021 editions.
Dr. Andrew Siemion
“In 2020 the Breakthrough Listen team identified a candidate technology signal in observations of the nearby star Proxima Centauri using the Parkes telescope, which was designated Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1 (BLC-1),” Siemion told IFLScience after the new claims. . “Subsequent extensive analysis led to the conclusion that BLC-1 most likely originated from terrestrial radio frequency interference.”
“The Listen team continues to observe many nearby stars, including Proxima Centauri, with a variety of objects, but there have been no re-discoveries or other developments about BLC-1 that change the conclusions in our 2021 editions.”
As always, there was a simple explanation. Hopefully, one day, there won’t be.