Alien Signal or Not?
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.
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00:00This month Chinese scientists claimed that their gigantic sky-eye telescope
00:05could have picked up trace radio communications from intelligent aliens
00:09but it turns out it may have just been a case of mixed signals.
00:17So on June the 14th Chinese astronomers came out with claims that while they were using China's
00:23gigantic 500 meter aperture fast or sky-eye telescope they picked up three signals which
00:31they think could have come from intelligent aliens. One in 2019 and two in 2022. Now narrowband radio
00:39signals aren't usually produced by nature but humans use them a lot in satellites, TVs, cell
00:46radar. So 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. Maybe we were just
00:58sent an intergalactic what you up to or we intercepted some alien daytime TV. Either way
01:06there's a possibility when we see narrowband signals that it comes from intelligent life.
01:11The story quickly started making headlines around the world and appearing all over social media
01:16before Dan Wertheimer, an American SETI or search for extraterrestrial intelligence scientist who
01:23worked closely with the Chinese scientists in finding the signals, came out to say that they
01:27were almost certainly not from aliens but from human technology instead. But how can Wertheimer
01:34for sure? Well Wertheimer said to us that the big problem with the gigantic radio telescopes
01:41that scientists use to intercept all of these radio signals is that they're so sensitive
01:47they can measure radio signals that are beamed from earth from light years away. Now that may
01:53be amazing for finding things from distance but it means that they're also incredibly susceptible to
01:58the zillions of homegrown signals that we produce every second. Now some of these signals even to a
02:06trained scientist could fool them and appear like they genuinely came from deep space. We call these
02:13errant 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
02:27subtle interference effect. Despite the error having spread around the world the scientists
02:33need not feel too embarrassed. This recent false alarm is far from the first time that alien hunting
02:40scientists have been led astray by noise from chattering humans. In 2019 for instance astronomers
02:47thought they spotted a narrowband radio signal beamed to earth from Proxima Centauri which is
02:53the nearest star to our sun but further studies made two years later revealed that it was most
02:59likely from malfunctioning human equipment. Another famous set of signals which bewitched
03:06scientists between 2011 and 2014 was also supposed to have come from aliens until
03:14scientists realized that it was actually made by their fellow researchers microwaving their lunches.