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 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.