Researchers in the SETI project Breakthrough Listen have found a mysterious signal that seems to come from the Proxima Centauri system, the star closest to the Sun. The Guardian reports, citing an unnamed astronomer. Because this information was made public in advance, there are few more details and the review has not yet been completed. The scientists involved have confirmed the report to two science magazines.

It is therefore an extremely narrow-band signal at a frequency of almost exactly 982 Megahertz. According to current understanding, technology is the only possible source, Andrew Siemion of the University of California, Berkeley, told Scientific American.

In astronomy there are always observations that cannot be explained at first. While some suspect extraterrestrials behind it, others expect new insights into the nature of the universe. They are always exciting. heise online takes a look at some of these up to now inexplicable anomalies.

“The most exciting signal” The discovery therefore took place within the framework of the 1977 project presented by the Russian Billionaire Yuri Milner is funded. Participating researchers can, among other things, pay for observation time at telescopes in order to search for traces of extraterrestrial intelligence (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence or SETI). As the magazine Scientific American now writes, the Parkes Observatory in Australia was on 29. April 2019 Observations of Proxima Centauri carried out. So far, two exoplanets have been discovered on the star that is closest to us. In the data collected at the end of April 2019 the puzzling signal was discovered by a student in October of this year. Since then it has been analyzed.

“That is the most exciting signal that we have discovered in the Breakthrough Listen project,” says Sofia Sheikh from Penn State University made the discovery. She directed the analysis. Because before no signal had skipped so many exclusion filters. Internally, the signal is now called BLC1 for “Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1”. For example, as she explains to Scientific American, the telescope only saw the signal when it was pointing directly towards Proxima Centauri. This means that an earthly source or a satellite, for example, is quite unlikely. Nevertheless, the researchers expect that there is an explanation that can be traced back to us humans – with Breakthrough, for example, the probability for this is seen in 99 , 9 percent.

As the US magazine continues to write, even Milner himself assumes that the detailed analysis will reveal an explanation that will not be due to extraterrestrial intelligence. There are some other peculiarities: No traces of modulation were found that could indicate information transmission. In addition, the frequency seems to increase slightly, while one would actually expect exactly the opposite. At the same time, follow-up observations with the Parkes Observatory did not find the signal again. For Sheikh, this is currently the most exciting unexplained signal since the Wow! Signal from the year 1977. Of course, “they’re never aliens,” she says. But actually the sentence should be: “So far there have never been aliens.”

Criticism of leak, speculation about aliens In the reports it is now pointed out that astronomy takes place in a sea of ​​signals and that there are always phenomena that are not initially due to earthly technology or natural processes are to be explained. He also explains the expectation that an explanation will be found that does not require extraterrestrial intelligence. This is one of the reasons why there is certainly criticism of the leak through which the information reached the public without the analysis being able to be completed, not from those involved, but from scientists who were not concerned with this discovery. In addition, the researchers were deprived of the opportunity to present their discovery for themselves, writes the astronomer Jason Wright.

Wright also addresses the question of whether it is not a far too improbable coincidence would be if the first signal from extraterrestrial intelligences were discovered at the star that is closest to us. He believes the opposite is also possible, so Proxima Centauri could even be the only star from which such signals come. The underlying explanatory approach compares a possible galaxy-wide communication network with our cellular network: Instead of sparking every cell phone, our cell phone also contacts the cell phone mast. Communication from Proxima Centauri could therefore correspond to direct contact on the last mile. But of course this is pure speculation. The researchers involved want to publish the analysis of the BLC1 at the beginning 2021.

(mho)