Alien Signal or Not?
Chinese scientists' claims that their "Sky Eye" telescope could have picked up signals from intelligent aliens have been met with skepticism by an American colleague.
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00:00 This month Chinese scientists claimed that their gigantic sky-eye telescope
00:05 could have picked up trace radio communications from intelligent aliens
00:09 but it turns out it may have just been a case of mixed signals.
00:13 So on June the 14th Chinese astronomers came out with claims that while they were using China's
00:23 gigantic 500 meter aperture fast or sky-eye telescope they picked up three signals which
00:31 they think could have come from intelligent aliens. One in 2019 and two in 2022. Now narrowband radio
00:39 signals aren't usually produced by nature but humans use them a lot in satellites, TVs, cell
00:45 phones, radar. So when scientists see them coming from space they think there's a possibility
00:53 that there could be some form of intelligent life form that may have been sending them. Maybe we
00:58 were just sent an intergalactic what you up to or we intercepted some alien daytime TV. Either way
01:06 there's a possibility when we see narrowband signals that it comes from intelligent life.
01:11 The story quickly started making headlines around the world and appearing all over social media
01:16 before Dan Wertheimer, an American SETI or search for extraterrestrial intelligence scientist who
01:23 worked closely with the Chinese scientists in finding the signals, came out to say that they
01:27 were almost certainly not from aliens but from human technology instead. But how can Wertheimer
01:34 know for sure? Well Wertheimer said to us that the big problem with the gigantic radio telescopes
01:41 that scientists use to intercept all of these radio signals is that they're so sensitive they
01:47 can measure radio signals that are beamed from earth from light years away. Now that may be
01:53 amazing for finding things from distance but it means that they're also incredibly susceptible to
01:58 the zillions of homegrown signals that we produce every second. Now some of these signals even to a
02:06 trained scientist could fool them and appear like they genuinely came from deep space. We call these
02:13 errant signals RFIs or radio frequency interference and Wertheimer says that if you haven't been
02:21 studying them for that long then it means that you're much more likely to get hoodwinked by a
02:27 subtle interference effect. Despite the error having spread around the world the scientists
02:33 need not feel too embarrassed. This recent false alarm is far from the first time that alien
02:39 hunting scientists have been led astray by noise from chattering humans. In 2019 for instance
02:46 astronomers thought they spotted a narrowband radio signal beamed to earth from Proxima Centauri
02:52 which is the nearest star to our sun. But further studies made two years later revealed that it was
02:59 most likely from malfunctioning human equipment. Another famous set of signals which bewitched
03:05 scientists between 2011 and 2014 was also supposed to have come from aliens until
03:13 scientists realized that it was actually made by their fellow researchers microwaving their lunches.
03:21 [Music]