Alien signal or human interference? Researcher using 'Sky Eye' telescope explains

Chinese researchers caused a massive stir in the scientific community when they claimed that the “Sky Eye” telescope has picked up signals which they believed originated from aliens. However, that claim has now been questioned by an American researcher. Dan Werthimer, which works for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) at the University of Berkeley, California and a co-author on the research project which first spotted the signal, believes that the signals are actually from “human interference”. The news about the signals coming from aliens was reported by a lot of media outlets after it appeared on the official newspaper of China's Ministry of Science and Technology.

The claim found more footing as the narrow-band radio signals found by the radio telescope are not found from natural sources, but Werthimer said they were most probably artificial signals.

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"The big problem, and the problem in this particular case, is that we're looking for signals from extraterrestrials, but what we find is a zillion signals from terrestrials," Werthimer told Live Science.

"They're very weak signals, but the cryogenic receivers on the telescopes are super sensitive and can pick up signals from cell phones, television, radar and satellites — and there are more and more satellites in the sky every day. If you're kind of new in the game, and you don't know all these different ways that interference can get into your data and corrupt it, it's pretty easy to get excited."

Despite the claims by the authorities, the team of scientists have remained quite cautious in their approach and have keep the possibility open of the signals not being from alien sources.

"These are several narrow-band electromagnetic signals different from the past, and the team is currently working on further investigation," Zhang Tongjie, head scientist at the China Extraterrestrial Civilization Research Group at Beijing Normal University, said in the report. "The possibility that the suspicious signal is some kind of radio interference is also very high, and it needs to be further confirmed and ruled out. This may be a long process."

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