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FAST - Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope logo.
June 15, 2022
China’s FAST telescope: World’s largest radio telescope
Image above: FAST – world’s largest dish-shaped radio telescope – began a program to seek alien intelligence in 2020. This year, it detected a “suspicious” signal while observing exoplanets. Image via Ou Dongqu/Xinhua/ZUMA/Nature.
There’s chatter on Twitter this afternoon (June 14, 2022) about several new possible artificial signals detected by the 1,640-foot (500-meter) FAST radio telescope in China. The implication is that these might be signals from an alien civilization. Global Times (@globaltimesnews) – which describes itself as “China state-affiliated media” – was one source that reported the story. At this time, there’s no confirmation for the story. And Chinese scientists note that the suspicious signals might be some kind of natural radio interference. Or not.
Credit: Twitter
FAST is the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope. Since 2020, it has been engaged in a program to search for alien life. According to a story published today (June 14) in the Chinese news source YiCai:
… The team discovered two groups of signals from space in 2020 when processing data observed by FAST in 2019. This year, it found another suspicious signal from observing exoplanets.
Andrew Jones (@AJ_FI on Twitter), who describes himself as a “journalist tracking China’s space program,” tweeted:
Credit: Twitter
Jones explained that he got his information from this Chinese source on Twitter. Here is the Chinese tweet (translation via Google translate):
Searching for extraterrestrial civilization, ‘China Sky Eye’ [FAST telescope] found suspicious signals.
Original Science and Technology Daily Science and Technology Daily 2022-06-14 02:44 Posted on Beijing Science and Technology Daily reporter He Xinghui.
Video above: FRB 20190520B – a repeating fast radio burst associated with a persistent radio source.
After launching the search for extraterrestrial civilizations, the ‘China Sky Eye’ [FAST] has made important progress. A few days ago, Professor Zhang Tongjie, chief scientist of the China Extraterrestrial Civilization Research Group of the Department of Astronomy and Extraterrestrial Civilization Research Group of Beijing Normal University, revealed that his team used the ‘Chinese Sky Eye’ to discover several cases of possible technological traces and extraterrestrial civilizations from outside the Earth. Candidate signal. Zhang Tongjie said that these are several narrow-band electromagnetic signals different from the past, and the team is currently working on further investigation. ‘The search for China Sky Eye is a long one, and we have been working hard.’
Note that Zhang Tongjie also said:
The possibility that the suspicious signal is some kind of radio interference is also very high, and it needs to be further confirmed or ruled out. This may be a long process.
Bottom line: There’s a report from China today (June 14, 2022) about several new possible artificial signals – presumably sign of an alien intelligence – detected by China’s FAST radio telescope.
FAST: https://fast.bao.ac.cn/
Images (mentioned), Video (SciNews), Text, Credits: EarthSky/Deborah Byrd/Paul Scott Anderson.
Greetings, Orbiter.ch
