China said its giant Sky Eye telescope may have picked up signs of life beyond Earth, according to a report by the state-sponsored Science and Technology Daily, which appeared to have subsequently deleted the report and messages about the discovery.
The narrow-band electromagnetic signals detected by Sky Eye — the world’s largest radio telescope — are different from previous ones recorded, and the team is investigating them further, the report said, citing Zhang Tonjie, chief scientist on an alien civilizations research team. founded by Beijing Normal University, the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of California, Berkeley.
However, the suspicious signals could also be some type of radio interference and require further investigation, Zhang added.
It’s not clear why the report has apparently been removed from the website of the Science and Technology Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, although the news has already started trending on the social network Weibo and has been picked up by others. media. , including state-run.
In September 2020, Sky Eye, located in China’s southwestern Guizhou province and measuring 500 meters (1,640 feet) in diameter, officially launched a search for extraterrestrial life. The team discovered two sets of suspicious signals in 2020 while processing data collected in 2019, and found another suspicious signal in 2022 from observational data from exoplanet targets, Zhang said, according to the report.
China’s Sky Eye is extremely sensitive in the low-frequency radio band and plays a vital role in the search for extraterrestrial civilizations, Zhang is said to have said.
Calls from Bloomberg News to Science and Technology Daily went unanswered.
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