Did Scientists REALLY Just Discover an Alien Message? | Unveiled

Did Scientists REALLY Just Discover an Alien Message?

Alien life was once considered something of a taboo topic among mainstream scientists and academics. For a long time, any research into UFOs, or into making contact with aliens, was frowned upon… and often declared pseudoscience. But not anymore. In the modern world, we have the US government releasing official reports about UFOs, we have plenty of cases from within the US military, and now even NASA is investigating. But might first contact have already happened? And did China beat America to the scoop?

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; did scientists just discover an alien message?

It didn’t take long after the invention of radio for humans to wonder if the same tech could one day be used to make contact with things not of this Earth - extraterrestrials. Here was a technology capable of sending messages at light speed, even through the void of space, so the chances seemed good. One of the first to suggest an alien application for radio was the famed inventor Nikola Tesla, who reportedly questioned whether a souped-up version of his new wireless system might also be able to contact beings on Mars. Tesla was also among the first to claim that he’d received an alien message, believing that another civilization (again, on Mars) had reached out to him via radio in 1899.

Though there wasn’t an official organization until the late twentieth century, the experiences of Tesla (and others) go down as some of the earliest examples of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The formation of the SETI Institute came about in 1984, as the wider debate around the possibility of contacting alien life grew and grew. And, really, since that time, SETI has mainly focused on the potential use of radio to this end. As we found in another recent video, some now believe that a search for extraterrestrial artifacts might be a better way forward… but radio remains our most widely used method, regardless, continuing on a tradition of research that’s been going for more than one hundred years.

When using radio transmissions for SETI, however, scientists must meticulously ensure that any signal they detect really is artificial (rather than natural). And herein lies why it has proven so tricky (to the point of impossible) over the years to say that any one radio signal definitely has come from an alien group. There are so many objects in space that can (and do) produce radio waves all the time, such as pulsars, black holes, and even solar flares. Nevertheless, there have been some detections that have proven more interesting than others. Any discovered signals that are seemingly repetitive, for example, are more likely to warrant closer study. Among the technology that SETI turns to for that closer study are telescope arrays like the Allen Telescope Array in California, which has cataloged hundreds of millions of signals over the course of its run… or the SERENDIP setup (the Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations) which is also in California, and which has found hundreds of notably suspicious signals. Today, though, the focus is on China’s Five hundred Meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, otherwise known as the FAST.

The FAST was created with a main drive toward finding alien life. And, according to some recent reports, as it completes its sixth year of full operations, it may have finally done just that. Headlines broke in June 2022, but the story goes a couple years further back. Dubbed China’s “Sky Eye”, the FAST telescope detected a signal of note multiple times between the years 2019 and 2022. According to reports, the signal appears to be coming from the direction of a distant exoplanet named Kepler 438b – an earth-like world orbiting around the red dwarf star, Kepler 438, about 472 lightyears away from us. The planet had already been deemed a promising candidate for alien life due to the distance between it and its home star, as well as some comfortably survivable average surface temperatures. But now, the signal coming out of Kepler 438b has been branded by researchers as a possible “technosignature”, to suggest that it might be the result of alien technology. The seeming regularity and repetition are key features, made even more intriguing because of where the signal originates from, specifically: a potentially habitable planet.

So how did the FAST hear it in the first place? Well, it’s able to pick up signals from so far away due to its spectacular and specialist sensitivity, which is rated amongst the highest in the world. It’s also the largest radio telescope in the world. It can, then, detect even the faintest radio signals that hit the earth, and so it's a leading tool as we scour even the darkest depths of the universe for life. Nevertheless, those working on the data from FAST did caution against jumping to conclusions too soon. As with all signals that seemingly could have an artificial origin, this latest one still requires a lot of further testing. It could still be that there’s a natural phenomenon that’s causing it, or that there’s some other type of interference happening.

It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that radio readings have been misinterpreted. Signals from the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia were once, notoriously, mistaken as being potentially alien made… when in fact they had been generated via microwave ovens from within the Parkes facility itself. And, in fact, this latest one from the FAST could yet be explained away much closer to home, too. Such is the delicate nature of identifying these things, and the extreme sensitivity of FAST, commentators have already highlighted how the signal could just as well have originated from Earth. It might appear as though it’s coming direct from Kepler 438b, but we haven’t had official confirmation because we can’t yet be sure. What initially sent the internet into something of a frenzy were general reports of one researcher declaring that the signal was “likely” alien… but, elsewhere, the reaction has been a little more conservative.

There is one final and unique element of mystery to the FAST signal specifically, though… as the original article that had detailed the newest findings was reportedly found to have quickly disappeared from the internet almost overnight. The news had barely been released, and then it was as though it had never happened at all. This somewhat unusual turn of events has (perhaps unsurprisingly) led some to even further dismiss the entire story as false or in error… again, with an eye on what the mistaken signals might really be. One SETI researcher, Dan Werthimer, is widely cited, asserting that the signals are “from earthlings, not from E.T.”. And many other onlookers have agreed, arguing that the apparent removal of the original article also proves that the results must’ve been misunderstood to begin with, and that really there’s nothing at all “alien” about them.

However, this isn’t the last word on the matter. Those from FAST who discovered the signal have yet to declare that they were wrong… and still no one knows exactly why the article was deleted. Indeed, another explanation might be that news of experiments and studies is often only made public whenever the peer-reviewed results are available; the initial reaction doesn’t always get released. So it could simply be that the original study has been taken down temporarily while the review process is completed. But, of course, there has also been some suggestion that there could still be more to the story. Might this, for example, be a case of the authorities hushing up UFO or alien evidence? Was this research actually rescinded because it truly did find something extraordinary… and the world just isn’t ready for it yet? Whenever there’s an element of doubt created – as there has been here – the “alternate” theories are sure to follow. What’s your opinion on the matter? Could there be more to this story than we’re currently being told?

Ultimately what we know is that there can be any number of problems when looking for aliens, or even just when studying astronomical objects, from earth. For myriad reasons, our view of the skies can be obscured, distorted, and deceiving… and astronomers note that the situation is only going to get worse with the launching of more and more satellites in the future. All of which means that the true origin of any one radio signal is always difficult to determine. For now, researchers are left wondering what the latest results from FAST really mean. Was the original story taken down simply because it got it wrong? Or is there another reason as to why it disappeared? Because that’s how scientists may have just discovered a potential alien message.