China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) located in the Guizhou province, is the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, equivalent to 30 football fields. As of now, it is the last remaining giant, single-dish radio telescope after tragedy struck the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.
The country's science ministry claims that the Sky Eye has detected an unusual signal that they believed to have come from life beyond Earth. Could this be true, or was it just a radio interference?
Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope
Signals From Outer Space
China's giant "Sky Eye" may have picked up some signals of extraterrestrial life, according to a Tuesday report from the state-backed Science and Technology Daily, the official newspaper of the Ministry of Science and Technology. Researchers from Beijing Normal University detected the signals believed to have come from extraterrestrial civilizations outside Earth.
Cosmologist Zhang Tongjie, also known as the country's top hunter of life in outer space, told the newspaper that FAST located "several narrow-band electromagnetic signals different from the past."
However, he added that the new signals could also be just radio interference. According to Insider, Tongjie noted that the possibility of those signals being radio interference is very high but needs to be further confirmed and ruled out before they could prove that it was indeed from civilization in outer space.
An insider previously reported that FAST could detect faint radio waves from pulsars and materials that are galaxies away. Researchers identified two sets of signals in 2019, and another set off signal this year.
The construction of the giant dish started in 2011 and was first observed in light in September 2016. It was not until three years later, in January 2020, after a series of testing and commissioning, that it was finally declared fully operational. It became available to the global scientific community in August 2021.
By February 2020, scientists have announced the first SETI observations using FAST. The Sky Eye joined the Breakthrough Listen SETI project in October 2016, which is a project that aims to search for intelligent life in outer space.
ALSO READ: NASA Will Send Nude Sketches to Space, Hopes Extraterrestrial Life Will Communicate Back
False Alarms and Unusual Radio Signals in the Past
According to the Free Press Journal, scientists have long been detecting unusual radio signals from outer space that were also believed to be signals from extraterrestrial life, which turned out to be false alarms.
For instance, Ohio State University's Big Ear radio telescope in the United States detected a strong narrowband radio signal on Aug. 15, 1977. The telescope was designed to support the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, but it turns out that the signal came from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. It was after that called the "Wow! signal."
The Big Ear observed the signal for about 72 seconds before it disappeared. But since then, it has not been detected again. A 2017 study also confirmed it was not from an extraterrestrial life but was a natural phenomenon generated by a comet.
RELATED ARTICLE: Has Extraterrestrial Life Finally Got into Contact? Astronaut Spots Stowaways Outside Cargo Spacecraft Resupplying the International Space Station
Check out more news and information on Space in Science Times.