For not the first time, scientists have found a strange signal coming from beyond the solar system, this time from our closest neighbouring star. The Parkes telescope in Australia discovered the strange radio signal coming from Proxima Centauri, which is ‘just’ 4.2 lightyears away.
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The signal was discovered within the narrow 982MHz band, which isn’t used on Earth by any technology, and we don’t know of any natural process that could create such a signal.
We know there is a planet in the Alpha Centauri system that could potentially be habitable, but let’s not immediately jump to aliens creating this signal. It was initially detected in April 2019, and the project that made the detection is still “carefully investigating” possible causes. Usually such strange signals are from interference researchers couldn’t “fully explain.” It is very unlikely that a civilisation would be on our cosmic doorstep and we only detect them now. It would also emit other detectable signals that would be easier to explain.
The scientists have said that the most likely explanation is either a previously unknown source of Earth-based interference or a newly discovered natural phenomenon.
According to signal analysis lead Sofia Sheikh the detection is similar to the “Wow!” signal from 1977. When scrubbing through the data from 2019, Sheikh and her colleagues noted that the telescope had looked at Proxima multiple times in scans lasting 30 minutes over the course of a week. It used a method called “nodding,” where the telescope will spend a period of time looking at a target and then an equivalent period looking elsewhere in the sky, to check that any potential signal is truly coming from the target.
“In five of the 30-minute observations over about three hours we see this thing come back,” Sheikh says.
