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astronomer hunting for radio set signals from exotic civilization have detected an " intriguing signal " from the direction of Proxima Centauri , the nearest headliner system to the sun , The Guardian report .
The researchers are still ready a paper on the uncovering , and the datum has not been made public , according to The Guardian . But the signal is reportedly a minute beam of 980 MHzradio wavesdetected in April and May 2019 at the Parkes telescope in Australia . The Parkes scope is part of the $ 100 million Breakthrough Listen projection to hunt for radio signals from technological sources beyond thesolar system . The 980 MHz signal appear once and was never find again . That frequence is important because , asScientific American points out , that band of radio set waves is typically lacking signals from human - made craftiness and artificial satellite .
CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope, also called The Dish, located in Australia.
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Breakthrough Listen detects unusual radiocommunication signals all the meter — between Earthly source , the sun ’s natural radio output and natural sources beyond thesolar organisation , there are a raft of receiving set wave take a hop around out there . But this signal appears to have come directly from the Proxima Centauri organisation , just 4.2 weak - years fromEarth . Even more tantalizing : The signal reportedly shift slenderly while it was being observed , in a way that resemble the shift triggered by the movement of a satellite . Proxima Centauri has one known rocky humans 17 % larger than Earth , and one make love accelerator giant .
The Guardian quoted an unidentified source with seeming access to the data on this signal as say " It is the first serious nominee for an alien communicating since the ' Wow ! Signal , ' " a famous wireless signaling detected in 1977 that also resembled a technosignature . But the Guardian monish that this signal is " likely to have a mundane origin too . "
Such more mundane source admit a comet or its H cloud , which also could excuse the Wow ! Signal .
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Penn State University ’s Sofia Sheikh , who led the analysis of the signal for Breakthrough Listen , sound her excitement about it : " It ’s the most exciting sign that we ’ve found in the Breakthrough Listen project , because we have n’t had a signal start through this many of our filter before , " Sheikh enjoin Scientific American , adding that the signal is now being referred to as Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1 , or BLC1 .
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An inherent challenge in searching for alien communication theory is that no one knows how aliens might communicate , and no one knows all the potential natural sources of radiocommunication waves in the universe . So when signal arrive that seem even credibly technological and do n’t come with easy innate explanations , it ’s alluring to make the startle to aliens . So far , no data on this signal is public , and it ’s likely that even when it does become public there will be no conclusive answer ; that ’s what happened with the Wow ! Signal after all .
Originally publish on Live Science .
