Signs of alien life? Scientists detected 8 mysterious radio signals
What scientists say about their discovery
Astronomers have discovered eight “suspicious” radio signals that they say could be signs of “technological life beyond Earth”, all thanks to a new artificial intelligence algorithm they developed that is capable of finding the ” flea in the straw”.
A team of experts, led by University of Toronto student Peter Ma, developed this new AI algorithm that helped them spot the signals during an examination of 820 stars at West Virginia’s Green Bank Telescope. The search even became an area that previously had no possible extraterrestrial activity .
The AI algorithm uses machine learning to distinguish between human-caused signals – such as those from GPS satellites and mobile phones – and potential aliens. Due to interference, the eight suspected signals had not been picked up in previous observations made at the Green Bank Telescope.
” We need to distinguish the exciting radio signals in space from the indifferent radio signals from Earth ,” Ma said in his study, which was published in the journal Nature Astronomy late last month. He also explained that while the eight signals are not definitive proof of life beyond Earth, their unexplained nature fuels theories of extraterrestrial activity .
A brilliant partnership of astronomers from the SETI Institute, Breakthrough Listen and other research institutions around the world, together with Peter Ma, developed this sophisticated AI algorithm that can search for the flea in the radio straw
The eight signals appear to come from direction No.5 of the collection of 820 stars, which range from 30 to 90 light-years away. Although they have not been proven to be aliens, they are still interesting. The signals look like what scientists say an alien signal would look like.
First, it was narrowband, which suggests it came from an extraterrestrial source , because signals caused by natural phenomena tend to be wideband.
Second, they had a so-called “tilt,” which means that their origin had some relative acceleration to our antennas, so it couldn’t have come from Earth. And finally, they appeared in observations with an ON source rather than an OFF source , whereas human radio interference usually occurs in both cases due to the source being nearby.
Ma hopes to use the AI algorithm to examine more stars and a larger expanse of space. His goal is to eventually expand the effort to examine a million stars through the MeerKAT telescope, located in South Africa.
He said: ” We believe that projects like this will help accelerate the rate at which we are able to make discoveries in our great quest to answer the question, ‘Are we alone in the universe?’
