A report by Chinese state-backed Science and Technology daily has stated that its giant Sky Eye telescope may have possibly picked up signs of alien civilisations. The daily has since deleted the reports and the posts connected to it.
Sky Eye — the world’s largest radio telescope has picked up narrow-band electromagnetic signals that differ from previous ones captured and the team is further investigating them, the report said. The report quoted Zhang Tonjie, chief scientist of an extraterrestrial civilization search team co-founded by Beijing Normal University, the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of California, Berkeley.
China’s 500-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), is the only giant, single-dish, radio telescope in the world. It is known informally as “Sky Eye,” said the state-backed Science and Technology daily.
The newspaper further added that Cosmologist Zhang Tongjie, once dubbed “China’s top alien hunter,” said FAST located “several narrow-band electromagnetic signals different from the past”.
There is no clarity over why the report was removed in the first place from the website of the Science and Technology Daily. The news had already been trending on social network Weibo. It was also picked up by other media outlets, including those run by the state.
Located in China’s southwestern Guizhou province, Sky Eye officially launched a search for extraterrestrial life in September 2020. According to Zhang Tonjie, while processing data collected in 2019 the team chanced upon two sets of suspicious signals in 2020. The team came across another suspicious signal in 2022 from observation data of exoplanet targets.
Zhang reportedly told the daily that China’s Sky Eye is extremely sensitive in the low-frequency radio band and plays a critical role in the search for alien civilizations.