Weltnachrichten – AU – What we know about the fascinating radio signal of our neighboring star

Researchers with the Breakthrough Listen project have discovered a strange signal coming from Proxima Centauri, the star closest to the Sun.. The signal has been labeled a possible alien transmission, but like so many examples in the past, this latest detection is likely another dead end.

Scientists at the $ 100 million Breakthrough Listen Project, funded by Israeli-Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, are currently working on a research report describing this signal, but news of the discovery somehow got to The last week Guardian leaked. With the cat comfortably out of the pocket, details about the strange signal now emerge, but the supporting data remains unavailable.

The narrowband radio signal found at 982. 001 MHz was picked up by the 210-foot radio telescope at the Parkes Observatory in Australia, Scientific American reports. The emission appeared to be from Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf 4. 2 light years away. The system is home to two known exoplanets, one of which, Proxima Centauri b, is located within the habitable zone. Interestingly, the frequency of the signal drifted slightly. This could be a Doppler shift caused by the movement of the source, such as an orbiting exoplanet.

The Breakthrough Listen team, led by Andrew Siemion of the University of California at Berkeley, wasn’t looking for aliens at the time. Rather, they looked for signs of flares emanating from the red dwarf, as these eruptions could adversely affect habitability in the Proxima Centauri system. This data was collected in April and May 2019, but the signal was only recently discovered. Shane Smith, a student at Hillside College in Michigan and an intern at the SETI project in Berkeley, found the signal while doing a routine check of the 30-hour data, according to SciAm (imagine it turns out to be Aliens – Smith would become the most legendary intern in history in an instant).

The emission appears to be a one-time event that occurs only once in the data set. With no apparent source for the signal, the team named it BLC-1, which means Breakthrough List Candidate 1. This is the first official candidate signal for the 10-year project that started in 2015. Penn State University astrophysicist Sofia Sheikh will be the lead author of the upcoming paper, which SciAm says is expected in early 2021.

There is a very small chance that the signal was generated by an extraterrestrial intelligence, whether it was an accidental radio loss or a targeted transmission intended to get our attention (i.e.. H. e. , a possible techno signature). In fact, the Breakthrough List researchers themselves expect that BLC-1s are not aliens. Pete Worden, the executive director of Breakthrough Initiatives, told SciAm, « It’s like 99. 9% ”no aliens.

As the famous X-Files poster says, “I want to believe. “However, this deficiency often leads us …

It is important that terrestrial interference such as a microwave oven or some other distraction has not yet been ruled out as a possible source of radio emission. BLC-1 brings the 1977 WOW! Signal to mind, which also did not repeat itself, making it difficult for scientists to study (recent research suggests it came from a hydrogen cloud caused by comets).

At first, BLC-1 appears to be an unmodulated signal. It’s a boring, unchanging tone. If aliens tried to contact us, they would certainly make the news a bit more interesting, such as transmitting a sequence of attention-grabbing prime numbers as illustrated in Carl Sagan’s Contact. The unmodulated nature of the signal also makes it a poor candidate for random specks.

In addition, the room is absolutely filled with all sorts of natural radio signals. A natural source for BLC-1 isn’t immediately obvious, but scientists need things like our sun, Jupiter, neutron stars and pulsars, supernova remnants, radio galaxies, etc.. exclude.

Terrestrial sources as well as orbiting satellites must be excluded, as Seth Shostak, senior scientist at the SETI Institute, recently stated in a post:

Indeed, it could be a telemetry signal from an orbiting satellite. The orbital motion of these satellites eventually causes their transmissions to rise and fall in frequency. And while you may think that the chances of accidentally tuning into a satellite aren’t great, think again. There are more than 2. 700 working satellites on our planet that provide information on the weather, images for Google Earth, GPS signals for navigation and high resolution photos for the military, to name a few. This deluge of information from hardware a few hundred miles above our heads is obviously important to a high-tech lifestyle, but it disrupts much of the radio spectrum. SETI scientists are trying to find a needle in a pile of pens.

It is also important to point out that the Proxima Centauri system is a very poor candidate for extraterrestrial life since the star is a red dwarf. Research shows that red dwarfs are exposed to frequent and powerful solar flares that make it difficult for life to develop around them. The exoplanet Proxima Centauri b is so close to its host star that it only takes 11 days to complete a single orbit.

And then there is the whole implausibility of everything. The likelihood that Proxima Centauri – the closest star to our solar system – is home to an intelligent civilization is so unlikely that I lack the correct adjectives to describe how unlikely it is. If our closest neighbor is inhabited by aliens and at the exact same time that we are, it means the rest of the galaxy must be full of life. However, given the great silence and the Fermi paradox, we cannot accept this conclusion. Indeed, if life is omnipresent both in time and space, we should have seen signs of extraterrestrials by now (more on this topic here, here, here, and here). .

This does not mean that the Breakthrough Listen team is wrong to view aliens as a possible source for BLC-1. You are absolutely right as there is still no good explanation to explain the strange emission. Going forward, radio astronomers should train their telescopes on Proxima Centauri in hopes of a repeat, while other scientists should investigate possible sources of the strange signal. We just have to be patient and not come to conclusions as our tendency is.

Proxima Centauri, star, extraterrestrial life, Alpha Centauri, breakthrough hearing