The report quotes 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 at Berkeley, as saying that the narrowband electromagnetic signals detected by Sky Eye, the world’s largest radio telescope, differ from those captured in the past and the team is investigating them further.
It is unclear why the report was apparently removed from the website of Science and Technology Daily, the official newspaper of China’s Ministry of Science and Technology, even though the story was already trending on social media site Weibo and had been picked up by other media outlets, including state-run ones.
Sky Eye, which is located in southwest China’s Guizhou region and has a diameter of 500 meters (1,640 feet), began an official search for extraterrestrial life in September 2020. Zhang, according to the paper, said the team noticed two sets of suspicious signals in 2020 while processing data acquired in 2019, and another suspicious signal in 2022 from observation data of planetary targets.
According to Zhang, China’s Sky Eye is particularly sensitive to the low-frequency radio band and plays a crucial role in the search for extraterrestrial civilizations.
He said the strange signals could possibly be radio interference and would need further analysis.
This is a developing story and we will keep you updated as new information emerges on this story.
