World News – AU – Alien hunting astronomers investigate a signal from Proxima Centauri nearby

Proxima b, figure. Proxima is the closest star to the Sun.. It is a dark red dwarf, smaller than . . . [] our sun and many thousands of times brighter. Here we see it with an orbiting rocky planet that was recently discovered. On the right you can also see Alpha Centauri, a binary star with two Sun-like components. The Alpha Centauri pair orbits fairly closely, while Proxima orbits this pair much further out, forming a triple star system

An unusual radio signal was discovered during radio telescope observations of Proxima Centauri, the closest star outside our solar system, originally collected in April 2019.

Let’s start with the important disclaimer: the scientists analyzing this enticing data are not saying they are aliens.

« It has some unique properties that have helped it pass many of our exams, and we can’t explain it yet, » Andrew Siemion of the University of California, Berkeley, told Scientific American.

Siemion leads the Breakthrough Lists initiative recently discovered in the ancient observations. An analysis of the signal called « Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1 » (BLC1) will be published in an upcoming article early next year.

Basically, we know so far that the signal appears to be coming from the direction of Proxima Centauri, a nearby red dwarf star that is also connected to the Alpha Centauri binary about four light years away. It is known that Proxima Centauri is home to at least two planets that could at least be Earth-like in size and composition.

The very narrow frequency of the signal (982 MHz) suggests a technological source, but that particular band of the spectrum is not usually associated with human transmissions, satellites, or other spacecraft.

The Breakthrough team has sifted through a number of potential signals over the past few years in search of one that could possibly be the product of extraterrestrial intelligence. So far, all of them have been explained by static electricity, interference, natural phenomena, or other sources that are definitely not aliens. All but this one.

But that definitely doesn’t mean that we can say that these are aliens. Not even close. Let us remember that Proxima Centauri is an active star that is likely to immerse all nearby planets in sterilizing radiation from frequent solar flares.

Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute claims it is still possible that the signal could be explained by a telemetry signal from an orbiting satellite.

Shostak also says the signal could actually be coming from something much further away, which happens to be behind Proxima Centauri. Or is there a still undiscovered world in the region with a strongly emitting magnetic field?

« Of course, there is always the possibility that the signal is really, really local, » writes Shostak. “A microwave oven in the break room of the Parkes radio telescope caused considerable dismay five years ago when it generated signals that initially indicated that something remarkable was happening in the distant cosmos. In fact, it was just someone heating up lunch. ”

I’ve covered science, technology, the environment, and politics for outlets like CNET, PC World, BYTE, Wired, AOL, and NPR. I’ve written e-books on Android and Alaska.

I’ve covered science, technology, the environment, and politics for outlets like CNET, PC World, BYTE, Wired, AOL, and NPR. I’ve written e-books on Android and Alaska.

I started to cover Silicon Valley for the now defunct Business 2. 0 magazine in 2000, but when the dotcom bubble burst I was on a public radio station in the Alaskan bush for three years.

After returning to my bottom forty-eight years, I freelanced on national public service radio programs in politics, energy, and the environment, and spent time as an online editor for AOL and Comcast.

For the past ten years I’ve focused back on the world of technology.

Proxima Centauri, star, extraterrestrial life, Alpha Centauri, search for extraterrestrial intelligence