Scientists involved in a project in search of alien life are now investigating a mysterious radio wave signal that appears to be coming from Proxima Centauri, the star closest to the sun.
The Guardian reported the finding Friday, writing that the emission was collected in April and May last year during 30 hours of observations by the Parkes telescope in Australia.
Scientists working on the Breakthrough Listen Project have been investigating the emission since its detection, although the source is still unclear. However, The Guardian reported that scientists found that a shift in the frequency of the beam is consistent with a planet’s motion.
One person in the astronomy community who spoke on the condition of anonymity as work is in progress told The Guardian that the beam that appears to have come from the direction of Proxima Centauri has not been noticed since the first sighting.
The source told the paper that the most recent bundle is “the first serious candidate since the ‘Wow! Signal ”, a radio signal collected by the Big Ear Radio Observatory in Ohio in 1977.
Launched in 2015 by Silicon Valley-based science and technology investor Yuri Milner, Breakthrough Listen explores the one million stars closest to Earth and “listens to messages from the 100 galaxies closest to ours. “to find evidence of civilizations beyond Earth,” he said the project website.
At the launch of the project in 2015 at the Royal Society in London, late physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking called the research ‘critical.’
“Humanity has a deep need to explore, to learn, to know,” said Hawking, who passed away in 2018 after decades of battling ALS. “We also happen to be social creatures. It is important for us to know if we are alone in the dark. “
Located 4.2 light-years from Earth, Proxima Centauri is known to orbit at least two planets. According to The Guardian, one is believed to be a gas giant, while the other is a rocky planet about 17 percent larger than Earth, known as “Proxima b.”
The planet is located in the “habitable zone” of Proxima Centauri, which means that it is at the temperature level through which water could flow, which has long led to speculation about the existence of life on the planet.
However, published a report in The Astrophysical Journal last week by a team of Australian researchers indicated that the planets are around Proxima Centauri is likely to be exposed to dangerous radiation stellar bursts and plasma ejections.
“Earth has a very powerful planetary magnetic field that protects us from these intense bursts of solar plasma. But since Proxima Centauri is a cool, little red dwarf star, this means that this habitable zone is very close to the star, much closer than Mercury is. for our sun, ” lead author Andrew Zic, who conducted the research at the University of Sydney, said in a news report.
“What our research shows is that this makes the planets very vulnerable to dangerous ionizing radiation that could effectively sterilize the planets,” he added.