WHAT DID THE CHINESE ASTRONOMERS DETECT?

It was announced as a suspicious signal (then withdrawn) but what lay behind it?

An alien race

When news emerged that scientists in China had discovered three signals at a frequency of 140.604 MHz, an official report suggested they could be from a distant alien civilisation. The report was quickly deleted, but some have suggested the Chinese government wants to keep it quiet. That’s unlikely.

Radio frequency interference

The scientists identified the signal – from the direction of the rocket planet Kepler 438 b – as radio frequency interference (although the planet is in a habitable zone). The discoverers said the possibility of it being radio interference was “very high”. This remains the most likely explanation.

A natural phenomenon

Could the signal have come naturally from somewhere, like a star? No. The fact that it was of a type that does not occur naturally rules this out. Again, it doesn’t point to aliens because the signal’s source, while artificial, was one that could have been produced by human-made technology.