A team of Chinese and US scientists have put their reputation on the line with a claim that a new narrowband signal could be a sign of intelligent extraterrestrial life.
The unusual signal picked up by the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in southwest China, the world's largest radio telescope, seems to have the team wondering if it could be the first ever sign of life beyond Earth.
Several authors from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as the Chinese researchers, were included in the paper spotted by the South China Morning Post.
The signal came from the direction of a potentially Earth-like exoplanet in the vicinity of the red dwarf.
The most Earth-like planet ever discovered outside the solar system was called into question by other researchers, despite being celebrated as the most Earth-like planet ever discovered.
The team concludes that the most likely cause of the signal is RFI from another source.
During the first targeted alien-hunting mission, the signal was detected.
The paper states that the signal is not likely to have been produced by natural processes in the universe.
It is possible that the source of the signal is a piece of human technology.
The paper showed that the signal that was observed for 20 minutes was from an object in the sky.
It's possible that the possibility of RFI from other sources near the FAST telescope could be ruled out.
The team is cautious in what it says.
"Although some of its characteristics are somewhat consistent with a true SETI signal, there is still a piece of evidence leading us to believe that it is an instrumental RFI signal," the preprint reads.
It's too early to conclude that an advanced extraterrestrial civilization is trying to get in touch with us.
Even if the signal is noise, it will still provide meaningful lessons for our SETI research in the future.
Futurism reached out to the researchers
Alien hunters find a radio signal from a planet similar to Earth.
Chinese scientists say they may have found a signal from extraterrestrial intelligence.
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