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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00:00This month, Chinese scientists claimed that their gigantic SkyEye telescope
00:05could have picked up trace radio communications from intelligent aliens.
00:09But it turns out it may have just been a case of mixed signals.
00:17So on June the 14th, Chinese astronomers came out with claims that while they were using China's
00:23gigantic 500 meter aperture FAST or SkyEye telescope, they picked up three signals which
00:31they think could have come from intelligent aliens. One in 2019 and two in 2022. Now,
00:38narrowband radio signals aren't usually produced by nature, but humans use them a lot in satellites,
00:44TVs, cell phones, radar. So when scientists see them coming from space,
00:51they think there's a possibility that there could be some form of intelligent life form
00:56that may have been sending them. Maybe we were just sent an intergalactic what you up to,
01:01or we intercepted some alien daytime TV. Either way, there's a possibility when we
01:07see narrowband signals that it comes from intelligent life. The story quickly started
01:12making headlines around the world and appearing all over social media before Dan Wertheimer,
01:18an American SETI or Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence scientist who worked closely with
01:24the Chinese scientists in finding the signals, came out to say that they were almost certainly
01:29not from aliens, but from human technology instead. But how can Wertheimer know for sure?
01:35Well, Wertheimer said to us that the big problem with the gigantic radio telescopes that scientists
01:42use to intercept all of these radio signals is that they're so sensitive they can measure radio
01:49signals that are beamed from Earth from light years away. Now, that may be amazing for finding
01:55things from distance, but it means that they're also incredibly susceptible to the zillions of
02:00homegrown signals that we produce every second. Now, some of these signals, even to a trained
02:06scientist, could fool them and appear like they genuinely came from deep space. We call these
02:13errant signals RFIs or Radio Frequency Interference and Wertheimer says that if you haven't been
02:21studying them for that long, then it means that you're much more likely to get hoodwinked by a
02:27subtle interference effect. Despite the error having spread around the world, the scientists
02:33need not feel too embarrassed. This recent false alarm is far from the first time that alien
02:39hunting scientists have been led astray by noise from chattering humans. In 2019, for instance,
02:46astronomers thought they spotted a narrowband radio signal beamed to Earth from Proxima Centauri,
02:52which is the nearest star to our sun. But further studies made two years later revealed that it was
02:59most likely from malfunctioning human equipment. Another famous set of signals which bewitched
03:06scientists between 2011 and 2014 was also supposed to have come from aliens, until
03:14scientists realised that it was actually made by their fellow researchers microwaving their lunches.
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