﻿Scientists Detected a TERRIFYING Signal from Proxima Centauri
Intro For several decades, radio telescope
facilities on Earth have picked up strange signals coming from the cosmos regularly. While most of
these mysterious signals have an explanation, some have even originated from our planet,
others remain elusive. One prevalent theory is that these signals may be sent by extraterrestrial
intelligence in an attempt to make contact with humans. Latest developments have seen
scientists detect a terrifying signal originating from Proxima Centauri. Let's take a closer look.
Fast Radio Bursts Most of these signals come
in the form of something called fast radio bursts, or FRBs. FRBs are super intense,
millisecond-long bursts of radio waves produced by unidentified sources in the distant cosmos.
Their discovery in 2007 by American astronomer Duncan Lorimer led to the term 'Lorimer Bursts'.
Since then, just a few dozen similar events have been observed in data collected by radio
telescopes around the world, building evidence that points to a variety of potential causes.
Only a handful of emissions have been traced to specific areas of the sky, most indicating sources
in other galaxies. In 2020, a source within the Milky Way - most likely belonging to a type of
neutron star called a magnetar - was confirmed to be a fast radio burst emitter. The flash of
radio waves is incredibly bright if distant, comparable to the power released by hundreds of
millions of suns in just a few milliseconds. This intensity suggests powerful objects like
black holes and neutron stars could be involved, with highly dense bodies such as magnetars and
pulsars as likely culprits. The events were once considered to be largely transient – they seemed
to happen once, without obvious signs of a repeat emission. It was only in 2016 that astronomers
found any evidence of multiple bursts from the same source. Several 'repeaters' have been
identified since then, with some researchers venturing that many, if not all FRB sources
could routinely emit bursts in sequences too difficult to detect using current instruments.
This hypothesis was supported when scientists reported in 2020 discovery that an FRB observed
three years previously had since repeated faintly on two more recent occasions. Shortly after this
report, astronomers with the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) Collaboration
published findings of the first FRB we know of that's repeating in a distinct pattern. The FRB
has a predictable pattern of hourly activity over four days, followed by 12 days of quiet.
With much still to learn about FRBs, their mechanism is one of the biggest mysteries
in modern astronomy. Because of their mysterious nature, many astronomers have dedicated themselves
to further studying this phenomenon. Searching for Alien Life
Astronomers searching for signs of life beyond Earth have spotted something strange. An as-yet
unexplained radio signal appears to be coming from the direction of the star closest to the
sun—a small red star roughly 4.2 light-years away called Proxima Centauri. Adding to the excitement,
at least two planets orbit this star, one of which might be temperate and rocky like Earth.
Breakthrough Listen, a decade-long search for alien broadcasts from the nearest million stars,
was using Australia's Parkes Observatory to study Proxima Centauri when the team detected
the conspicuous signal, which they dubbed BLC-1. The radio waves were picked up in
observations made between April and May 2019. Though many scientists strongly suspect that
the signal is human in origin, BLC-1 is the most tantalizing detection Breakthrough has made so far
in its search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI. The team is preparing two papers
describing the signal and follow-up analysis, which isn't yet complete. While researchers
continue to analyze the signal—and experts caution that there is almost certainly an ordinary,
terrestrial explanation—even a remote hint of life beyond Earth has people excited.
Scientists have been scanning the skies for radio signals that could be artificial in
origin for 60 years—starting with Project Ozma, a search conducted in 1960. Unlike radio waves
the cosmos produces naturally, these whispers from extraterrestrials are expected to look a lot like
the transmissions humans use to communicate. Such signals would cover a very narrow range of radio
frequencies. They would also have a characteristic "drift" indicating that the source is moving
toward or away from Earth—a clue that the radio source is coming from a distant cosmic object,
such as a planet orbiting a star. Scientists believe that only human technology seems to
produce signals like that, such as things like Wi-Fi, cell towers, GPS, and satellite radio.
All of these produce signals exactly like the ones they are searching the cosmos for,
which makes it very hard to tell if something is from outer space or human-generated technology.
Over the decades, astronomers have detected numerous candidate signals. Some turned out to
come from previously unknown astronomical sources such as pulsars, the rapidly rotating corpses
of dead stars that beam radio waves into the cosmos. The first known fast radio bursts—brief
blasts of radio waves that are still somewhat mysterious—initially seemed as though they could
be artificial signals. Signals called perytons, which are less energetic bursts of radio emission,
also raised eyebrows until scientists determined their origin: a microwave oven.
BLC-1 could be beaming from an object that isn’t transmitting as expected: a satellite that hasn’t
been identified yet, a plane traveling overhead, a transmitter on the ground near the telescope’s
line of sight, or perhaps something even more mundane, like faulty electronics in a nearby
building or a passing car. And then there are the signals that astronomers haven’t been able
to definitively pin to a natural source, such as the famous “WOW!” signal picked up by the Ohio
State University Radio Observatory, colloquially known as Big Ear, in 1977. This extremely bright
barrage of radio waves initially looked like a real SETI detection, but no one has been able to
verify it or find it again. A Strange Signal
In 2015, Breakthrough Listen kicked off a decade-long search funded by Silicon Valley
investor Yuri Milner, and so far, the team hasn't found anything definitive in their scans of the
skies. Starting in April 2019, Breakthrough aimed the Parkes telescope at Proxima Centauri—not
necessarily because scientists were searching for aliens, but because they were hoping to better
understand the gargantuan flares that small red dwarf stars like Proxima frequently emit. While
processing those observations this summer, Shane Smith, an undergraduate from Hillsdale College in
Michigan working with Breakthrough, spotted BLC-1 radiating from the star. Although the signal is
faint, BLC-1 passed all the tests the Breakthrough team uses to filter out the millions of signals
generated by humans: It was narrow in bandwidth, appeared to drift in frequency, and disappeared
when the telescope shifted its gaze from Proxima to a different object. Over the following days,
four similar signals appeared, although some have been ruled out as radio interference.
According to astronomers, if BLC-1 is, against all odds, a postcard from the star system next door,
then statistically speaking the Milky Way must be stuffed with communicating civilizations.
In this case, there would be more than a half-billion societies out there in our galaxy.
Since the detection, the team has again observed Proxima Centauri—and found nothing. Scientists are
working on developing new tests that could pinpoint the signal's origin,
including continuing to aim the Parkes telescope at Proxima. Scientists from the SETI Institute are
already in the process of creating new tests and diligently working to confirm the signal's origin
is a natural part of the SETI endeavor and one that everyone can learn and benefit from.
The team has stated that evaluating BLC-1 has taught them a lot about testing their data.
Follow-up observations of Proxima Centauri will be valuable for understanding how such
stars behave—as well as for achieving a comprehensive SETI search of a nearby star
system with known planets, even if it isn't populated by technologically savvy aliens.
Researchers say that even if this signal is most likely interference from human technology,
the process of identifying it has made them better at searching for such signals in the future. The
researchers scanned Proxima Centauri across a frequency range of 700 megahertz to 4 gigahertz,
with a resolution of 3.81 hertz. This is the equivalent of tuning to more than 800 million
radio channels at a time, with exquisite sensitivity. Using the Parkes Telescope in
Australia, one of the largest telescopes in the Southern Hemisphere, since 2016
scientists have detected more than 4.1 million "hits," or frequency ranges that had signs of
potentially significant radio signals. However, upon subsequent analysis, the vast majority of
such hits usually turned out to be emissions from human technology here on Earth. Specifically,
the researchers looked for radio signals that may have come from Proxima Centauri based on two main
criteria. First, they looked at whether the signal was changing steadily in frequency over time.
A transmitter on a distant planet is expected to move concerning whatever telescope on Earth
detects it, leading to a Doppler shift in frequency, akin to how ambulance sirens sound
higher-pitched as the vehicle drives toward you and lower-pitched as it moves away. Rejecting hits
with no such hints of motion reduced the number of hits from about 4.1 million to about 1 million.
Second, the researchers determined whether the remaining hits appeared to come from the direction
of Proxima Centauri. To determine this, the telescope pointed in the direction of the star and
then pointed away, repeating this "on-off" pattern several times. A candidate techno signature should
appear only in the "on" observation, when the telescope was looking toward the star,
whereas local sources are expected to have both "on" and "off" observations.
After scientists applied both these filters, they next visually inspected the remaining
5,160 candidates to weed out common mistakes. For example, sometimes a faint signal was visible
in the "off" observations but was not quite strong enough for the automated data analysis software to
detect. The remaining signal of interest persisted for more than two hours of observations and
appeared to be present only in "on" observations from Proxima Centauri. The scientists think BLC1
is most likely an extreme example of local interference, in the sense that its properties
are very different from other interference and it thus could mimic a Bonafide techno signature.
The project will continue monitoring Proxima Centauri and keep refining its algorithms to
improve its ability to discriminate between real and false signals. The field of techno signature
science has matured to the point where sufficient technical expertise exists to investigate putative
signals in great detail, and the data are of a high enough quality to do so rigorously.
The successful detection and investigation of BLC1 is indicative of a dramatic expansion of
observational capability in SETI searches. In the future, upcoming radio telescopes such as
MeerKAT in South Africa and the Very Large Array (VLA) in the southwest United States
will offer new and powerful ways to reject interference and improve our sensitivity.
Astronomers say they are already well along in deploying new SETI systems on MeerKAT and VLA,
and when they are fully online, they will allow them to observe millions of stars per year
between them. Outro
If you enjoyed this video, you may also like this one which looks into
Voyager's terrifying new discovery in space. Do you think there are aliens in Proxima Centauri?
Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.