29-12-2020 by Mirai
An Australian observatory has captured a mysterious "signal" several light years from Earth.
The radio signal would have been emitted in the vicinity of Proxima of the Centaur, the closest star to the Sun, located 4.2 light years away, reports The Guardian. It was picked up in April and May last year by the giant radio telescope at the Parkes Observatory in Australia, the British newspaper said.
While it regularly collects strange vibrations from space, they are usually quickly identified, and most often due to human or natural interference. But here, the mystery remains.
Australian astronomers said they isolated a narrow beam of radio waves of 982 MHz. Another intriguing detail: the signal would have "changed" slightly during the observation, specifies the specialized site Sciencepost.
The Parkes Observatory participates in the "Breakthrough Listen" project, designed to detect the presence of extraterrestrial signals. "We cannot explain it yet," said Andrew Siemion of UC Berkeley. "We do not know of any natural way to compress electromagnetic energy into a single-frequency container like this one," continues the astronomer.
This 982 MHz frequency band puzzles researchers. In fact, it is usually released by artificial satellites. However, the emission zone does not validate this thesis. It is not excluded that this signal will eventually be recognized as "terrestrial interference" but, nevertheless, it is the most serious discovery since the famous "Wow!" captured in 1977, still unexplained to this day.
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