Radio scientists have been puzzled by a beam of radio waves allegedly obtained from the star Proxima Centauri path. The controversy of the hour is whether some extraterrestrial intelligence has interacted with such a radio wave or whether it is only a fraction of our own technologies.
GOLDFIELD, NEVADA - JULY 18: (EDITORS NOTE: This image was shot with a fisheye lens.) The Milky Way galaxy as seen from the International Car Forest of the Last Church on July 19, 2020, in Goldfield, Nevada. The Car Forest is an outdoor art installation of junk vehicles planted in the ground vertically.
Breakthrough Listen
Breakthrough Listen is a $100 million initiative sponsored by a Israeli-Russian billionaire businessman, Yuri Milner. Milner has been committed for years to discovering unusual radio waves. This group is working on the decryption of the suspected unknown wave transmitter. It is only reportedly concluded, thus far, that the radio wave is a technical wave that may theoretically be foreign or ours. But there is also little to be verified. This is claimed to be the real 'breakthrough' point for Breakthrough Listen, following years of study.
The radio wave was assessed from the nearest identified star to the Earth, Proxima Centauri. Its size is just 4.24 light-years from Earth. Proxima Centauri is part of Alpha Centauri, a triple-star system. It is believed to have two worlds. One of which is significantly larger in form and scale than our homeworld. Experts claim situated in the star's habitable zone with a favorable temperature for water and organisms' habitation.
Experts say that the signal only seems to occur in their data while they are focusing on the area of Proxima Centauri. According to the New York Times, the star's threshold never crossed signal in past experiences. However, there are several caveats. But a lot of enthusiasm inside her team has been stirred by this radio signal.
First Observed in 2019
With a little indicator with a frequency of 982.02 megahertz reported at Australia's Parkes Observatory, experts first observed this strange radio signal in 2019. Interestingly, any natural phenomenon, such as an exploded star or a cosmic ray storm, will emit frequencies of a similar type.
Sadly, according to some researchers, these forms of signals have turned out to be nothing but RFI-radio frequency distortion more frequently than not. So, essentially, nothing other than any radio flashes in the evening sky might prove the curiosity around this finding.
False warnings have been encountered by SETI several times before. Frank Drake, then at Cornell and now retired from the University of California, Santa Cruz, for instance, allegedly once pointed a radio telescope at a pair of stars in 1960 in Green Bank, West Virginia. He was dreaming about using it to hear electromagnetic signals from aliens. But what appeared to be a foreign warning to him turned out to be a covert military experiment in the past of SETI's inception, rendering it a reductive apprehension.
Breakthrough Listen was revealed in 2015 by Milner and Stephen Hawking with much fanfare.
Exciting Fresh Inning
As Breakthrough Listen scientists switched the Parkes radio telescope on Proxima Centauri to track the star for aggressive flares, April 29, 2019, signaled an enthusiastic new inning in the field of study. For these stars, such outbursts are very normal and have the potential to pull down the atmosphere of a planet and make it uninhabitable.
During a sequence of 30-minute windows in which the SETI telescope aimed in Proxima Centauri's direction, this unexpected alien signal appeared five times on April 29. And though it never appeared to exist again after that. It seems like the signal never held any message. It has always been a monotonic sound that only tracks its life. It also indicated that the signal source is not on Earth's surface but is also associated with a spinning or orbiting entity. This can be calculated because, over the 30-minute periods, the signal drives gradually in frequency, but the drift does not fit the movements of any identified planets in Proxima Centauri.
Are signals from Proxima coming in?
Categorically, Sheikh claimed that they are not nearly finished yet, and a lot of research is yet to be done to be sure that the signal is not an intrusion. The project leader of Break Through Listen reports that on April 29, 2021, they will attempt to replicate the findings and copy the same motions of the Parkes telescope again. If the signal comes from Proxima, Sheikh hopes that the signal sender might feel free to interact again. But as of now, it appears to be a kind of periodic occurrence at the visitor center, having an effect on the environment that may not exist for the rest of the year. And though, no matter what the actual outcome demonstrates, this is certainly an incredibly thrilling breakthrough.
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