Alien believers are a buzz over new information which suggested that aliens are infact real. Scientists in China reported that their telescope, the Sky Eye, picked up potential alien signals. The first of these curious signals was found while chief scientist Zhang Tonjie was sifting through data from 2019. Then, this year, another signal was apparently picked up in additional data gathered on exoplanet targets.

This Chinese telescope – the Sky Eye – received data which suggested there might be alien’s trying to communicate with us

Our own UC Berkeley is affiliated with this story as the main scientist is part 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.

The discovery feels pretty legit because Zhang is a well-respected and also the Sky Eye is not only the largest single-fish radio telescope but is also most sensitive on the planet. It wasn’t just one piece of data that suggested alien life is trying to communicate through signals that their Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) picked up. 

And, it’s not the first time SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) have seen data that suggested alien life was trying to communicate. Nearly 40 years ago, on August 15th 1977, a radio signal was received by the Big Ear radio telescope in Ohio that lasted merely 1 minute and 12 seconds. This finding was found to be from sun-like star in the constellation Sagittarius nearly 1800 light-years away from Earth. They called it the “WOW” signal since the scientist, astronomer Jerry Ehman, wrote WOW on his printout of the discovery.

This is the “WOW” signal picked up over 40 years ago – a photo from livemint.com

Are the alien signals found in China Real?

As for the latest data out of China, UFO believers had to put their tin foil hats down once another scientist debunked the findings from China. Local scientist Dan Werthimer, the Marilyn and Watson Alberts SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) Chair in the Astronomy Department and Space Sciences Lab at the University of California, Berkeley was the one to bring us all down to earth.

“All of the signals detected by SETI researchers so far are made by our own civilization, not another civilization,” Werthimer added. “It’s getting hard to do SETI observations from the surface of our planet. Radio pollution is getting worse, as more and more transmitters and satellites are built. Some radio bands have become impossible to use for SETI.”

If there’s so much radio pollution in our atmosphere than how might we communicate with aliens? We’d have to bring our telescopes to the far side of the moon, suggests scientists. This is where we’d be able to get beyond the reach of our own lame and mundane radio pollution that is mucking up our possibility to communicate with aliens.

The original story about the detection of what might have been alien signals was posted on the website of China’s state-backed Science and Technology Daily newspaper, but was later taken down. I guess maybe this could all be a conspiracy and the data from China was actually real. Who’s to say if we may not be fooled into thinking otherwise? You never know, aliens could be out there. I for one enjoy thinking they are.

Workers at FAST conducting maintenance on December 13, 2020, shows. (NOEL CELIS/AFP/Getty Images