Theories about the existence of forms of extraterrestrial life have captivated the minds of both the curious and the skeptical in recent years thanks to various works of science fiction, testimonies of UFO sightings in the sky, and the work of independent researchers.
The hunt for aliens
But perhaps a possible trail of these famous extraterrestrials draws strength today from a sort of prophecy even published by the astronomer Camille Flammarion, who wrote in 1892: “We dare to hope that the day will come when means, those of our present unknown to science will give direct evidence of the existence of inhabitants of other worlds”. Words that perhaps find confirmation in the possibilities today Alien signals intercepted by the Fast radio telescope, the largest and most powerful eye on the universe in China. According to scientists, these signals from space could be possible traces of an extraterrestrial civilization.
Chinese research
“It comes from a metal-poor nanogalaxy,” they continue in their recently published study Nature Chinese astronomers, as reported by Corriere della Sera. “We need to keep doing research, and it will take a long time,” says Professor Zhang Tongjie, who directs the Fast project and leads the extraterrestrial research team at Peking University’s astronomy department. “Maybe the aliens sent us a message and in the future we may need their help, ”the Chinese astronomer concludes.
The case of “suspicious” signals
Fast stands for Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope. This eye on the universe, nicknamed Sky Eye, is located in Guizhou, a southwestern Chinese province, and they had to destroy a mountain to create it. The largest radio telescope ever built on Earth has a single disk 500 meters in diameter, an area roughly the size of forty football pitches. Being active since 2016, Fast has already collected two sets of fast and repetitive radio frequencies that could have originated in a distant galaxy. Chinese scholars said earlier this year Fast received “a new repeated signal from a constant radio source, made up of narrow-band electromagnetic pulses.
It was reported in the Science and Technology Daily newspaper that Zhang’s team has been identified two sets of signals in 2020, while analyzing data from Fast’s 2019 observations. Then another signal would have been detected in 2022 when the radio telescope pointed at some exoplanets. To rule out the possibility that the discoveries are radio interference and to investigate them, Zhang said the telescope will repeat observing “suspicious” signals.
Are we sure it’s not a false alarm?
On the other hand, Dan Werthimer, a Seti researcher at the University of California and collaborator with Seti researchers at Beijing Normal University in China, is skeptical: “These signals come from radio interference; They are due to radio pollution from earthlings, not extraterrestrials. The technical term we use is radio frequency interference. This may come from cell phones, TV stations, radars, satellites, and electronic devices and computers near the observatory in China that generate weak radio transmissions. All of the signals discovered so far by the Seti researchers are from our own civilization, not from another. It is becoming increasingly difficult to conduct Seti observations from the surface of our planet. As more transmitters and satellites are built, radio pollution will only get worse.”
Until the certain and irrefutable proof ofexistence of extraterrestrials, we always hope for the improvement of human life. Most likely, the greatest and most important scientific and mystical discovery will not take place outside of planet Earth, but within ourselves, as the famous saying goes: “Nosce te ipsum”, a Latin expression translating the Greek γνῶϑι σεαυτόν, one of the Apophthhagmas attributed to the Seven Sages, engraved on the pediment of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, exhorting people to recognize their human condition and limitations. Socrates made it his favorite maxim, interpreting it as an invitation to consider the limits of human knowledge before treading the path of knowledge and therefore virtue.
Carlo Toto, June 18, 2022