That’s an incredibly exciting prospect.īut this possibility also raises concerning questions about our conversation partners: Who are they? What are their motives? Do they pose a threat? Technologically advanced beings at Proxima Centauri could reach Earth in a few decades if they can traverse interstellar space at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. Our message could potentially stimulate a response in less than a decade, starting an interstellar dialogue well within the lifetimes of most people alive today. On the off chance that BLC-1 turns out to be the real deal, it would raise the question of whether humanity should send a reply - something within our current means. After all, why would aliens transmit signals that match such a specific value of a human-derived unit of measurement? “It could be from the orbital motion of a planet, or from a free-floating transmitter, or from a transmitter on a moon,” Penn State University astronomer Jason Wright wrote on his blog.īut he quickly added, “The most likely explanation is probably that it is a source on the surface of the earth whose frequency is, for whatever reason, very slowly changing.”Īstronomers think the fact that the signal is very close to an integer MHz value strongly suggests a human origin, Wright also wrote. Over the course of the observations, it increased in frequency - essentially rising in pitch - by an unspecified amount, suggesting a source moving toward the telescope. The transmission was apparently monotone, meaning it was not modulated in a manner that conveys more complex information. On December 19, he tweeted: “At this point we have some interesting signals we believe are interference but as of yet have not been able to track down the source.”īased on the information that has been made public, the signal was concentrated into an extremely narrow range of frequencies - the hallmark of an artificial signal and distinctly unlike all known natural radio sources. Pete Worden, executive director of Breakthrough Listen’s parent organization, Breakthrough Initiatives, told Scientific American that the signal is 99.9 percent likely to be human radio interference. And they are emphasizing the word “candidate.” The team has dubbed the signal BLC-1, for Breakthrough Listen Candidate-1. Team leader Andrew Siemion told Scientific American, “It has some particular properties that caused it to pass many of our checks, and we cannot yet explain it.” But this transmission was unlike anything the project has previously encountered. Ultimately, the signal’s origin appears tightly constrained within a 16′-wide circle - roughly half the size of the Full Moon - around Proxima Centauri on the sky.īreakthrough Listen employs software filters that reject the cacophony of signals originating from Earth or Earth-orbiting satellites to isolate those coming from deep space. Notably, when the telescope was turned away from the star, the signal vanished. In late October 2020, Breakthrough Listen intern Shane Smith, an undergraduate at Hillsdale College, found a narrowband transmission at a frequency of 982.002 megahertz - in a portion of the radio spectrum rarely used by human-made transmitters - buried in the data.Īlthough the press reports are a bit unclear on exactly how and when Parkes detected the signal, it apparently showed up during five 30-minute periods over several days, all while the telescope was pointing directly at Proxima. But the $100 million Breakthrough Listen project, the world’s most advanced SETI endeavor, was piggybacking on the observations to simultaneously search for alien signals. Notably, this feeble star has at least two planets, one of which is a super-Earth with at least 1.17 Earth masses that orbits in the star’s habitable zone - the region around a star where a planet with the right conditions could host liquid water on its surface.Īstronomers were using Parkes to catch radio emission from powerful flares shooting off the star. The 64-meter Parkes radio telescope in Australia picked up the faint signal in April and May 2019 while observing Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf 4.25 light-years from Earth. Since then, however, the discovery team has remained tight-lipped about the signal.īut the information revealed to date is intriguing. Researchers subsequently granted interviews to Scientific American and National Geographic. The discovery was leaked to the British newspaper The Guardian, which reported the story December 18. More likely, it’s much ado about nothing. It could turn out to be the real deal - a calling card from another civilization. An enigmatic radio signal from the direction of Proxima Centauri, the Sun’s nearest stellar neighbor, has set the internet ablaze with rumor and speculation.
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