[imagesource: Xinhua]

China’s massive ‘Sky Eye’ FAST telescope, the world’s largest alien-hunting radio telescope, seems to have picked up a strange signal which could suggest that there is indeed life beyond Earth.

But hang on a minute before getting carried away, because the scientists who detected and reported on it are rather tentative about this preliminary discovery.

The team of Chinese scientists in charge of scanning distant exoplanets for signs of life made the sweeping statement that they potentially managed first contact with an extraterrestrial civilisation in a report, which was then swiftly deleted, according to The Daily Maverick:

It isn’t clear why the report was apparently removed from the website of the Science and Technology Daily, the official newspaper of China’s science and technology ministry, though the news had already started trending on social network Weibo and was picked up by other media outlets, including state-run ones.

More via Futurism:

“The possibility that a suspicious signal is some kind of radio interference is also very high, and it needs to be further confirmed and ruled out, which can be a long process,” Zhang Tongjie, chief scientist of China ET Civilization Research Group told the paper, as translated by Google.

…While the claim is obviously immense, the researchers were quick to point out there may be simpler explanations for the signals as well. Besides, we should take these statements with a grain of salt as we have yet to see a scientific paper, let alone a peer review.

While processing data found in 2019 by the Sky Eye, or more accurately, the Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), located in southwest China, the odd signal was detected:

“We look forward to the [FAST telescope] being the first to discover and confirm the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations,” Tongjie told the paper.

…”[The FAST telescope] will repeat observations of suspicious signals that have already been discovered to further identify and detect new signals,” Tongjie added.

Caveats aside, the scientists’ excitement about the possibility of confirming the potentially world-altering discovery could be something to hold on to.

Even though it appears there is no time to actually investigate the signal and potential alien force on our doorstep, according to Peng Bo, a researcher at the National Astronomical Observatories.

Surely it is worth dropping everything else to look up and out for our extraterrestrial peers?

[source:futurism&dailymaverick]