In recent days, apparently extraordinary news has been bouncing around in newspapers and websites around the world: radio signals from space have been detected that have characteristics never seen before. These emissions have been identified as part of the "Breakthrough Listen Project", an initiative born in January 2016, aimed at finding evidence of intelligent life in the universe and financed with 100 million dollars by the Russian businessman Yuri Milner. This project, to which Hawking has given its support and advice, constantly scans about 10 billion different frequencies, examining the 100 galaxies closest to the Earth, and searches for signals, whether radio or optical, that may have the appearance of a source artificial and unnatural. The scan is carried out with the help of 9 million volunteers, who all over the world make their computers available to allow the research center to examine the data.
What has particularly struck world public opinion is the fact that the Breakthrough Listen Project has recently collected 15 short radio frequency signals (FRBs) which have peculiar characteristics and which have been repeated in an identical way over time. These radio emissions were detected by the Green Bank Telescope of West Virginia on August 26, during a series of scans of 30 minutes each for a total duration of five hours. The pulses all came from a dwarf galaxy about 3 billion light-years away from Earth which is home to a radio source known as FRB 121102.
In any case, the meaning or purpose of these emissions remains a mystery: they could be space “noises” generated by neutron stars or black holes, just as they could represent evidence of extraterrestrial technology in the universe. What suggests the latter hypothesis is the emission peak always placed on the same frequency: this would suggest microwave or wireless data transmission systems.
Clearly, there are many UFO and space research enthusiasts who believe that these signals would represent the ultimate proof of the existence of life outside the Earth. But it is not only them who are particularly affected: Vishal Gajjar, of the Berkeley Research Center, said that “there are only 30 sources of these types of signals in the Universe, and only one that repeats constantly. We have to study it again. There are more theories than sources of signals, more questions than answers. The more we study, the more we find strange things ”.
It must be said that, even if the origin was "technological" and not natural, the encounter with extraterrestrials does not seem so likely in any case, for the simple fact that the intercepted radio signals travel at the speed of light and those just picked up they were therefore emitted 3 billion years ago, when the Earth was 2 billion years old and, therefore, was inhabited only by unicellular life forms. It is therefore difficult to hypothesize that an alien civilization could have survived for such a long period of time.
Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center and the Breakthrough Listen program, said: “Some reporters have written that this is evidence of extraterrestrial life, but no one is stating this. We do not know if the received transmissions turn out to be signals of extraterrestrial technology, but we know for sure that our program contributes to push the frontiers of our understanding of the universe around us a little further.
By Giovanni Calcerano