8 January 2021
China is claiming that its enormous "Sky Eye" telescope may have picked up trace signals from a distant alien civilisation, according to a recently posted and subsequently deleted report by Chinese scientists.
Astronomers at Beijing Normal University have discovered "several cases of possible technological traces and extraterrestrial civilisations from outside the Earth,” according to recent report in Science and Technology Daily, the official newspaper of China's Ministry of Science and Technology.
The signals were picked up by China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), nicknamed "Sky Eye," which is the largest radio telescope in the world. Sky Eye was put to work scanning deep space for radio signals that could indicate extraterrestrial life in 2019; sifting through that data in 2020, the researchers said they spotted two suspicious narrow-band, potentially artificial radio signals. Then, in 2022, a targeted survey of known exoplanets found another strange narrow-band radio signal, bringing the tally up to three.
As the signals are narrow-band radio waves typically only used by human aircraft and satellites, they could have been produced by alien technology. However, the scientists say their findings are preliminary and should be taken with caution until the analysis is complete. There have been several narrow-band suspicious electromagnetic signalsthat are believed to be different from those received in thepast, and which warrant urgent investigation.
Following its publication, the report quickly began to circulate on the Chinese social media network Weibo and was picked up by a number of other state-run outlets. The reasons behind its sudden deletion are unclear.
