A couple of years ago, the Parkes Murriyang radio telescope in Australia detected a signal that appeared to be coming from our nearest stellar neighbour, Proxima Centauri. Researchers have conducted an extensive investigation and now conclude that the signal originated on Earth.
In November 2020, and in January and April of this year, the researchers pointed the Parkes telescope at Proxima Centauri to see if they could pick up the signal again. They could not.
Eventually, the team spotted other signals in the original data that looked a lot like the 982-megahertz signal but were at different frequencies. These signals had been tossed out by the team’s automated analysis as being earthly interference. Further analysis showed that BLC1 and these ‘lookalike’ signals were all interference from an unknown source. The signals had modulated and muddied one another, much as a guitar amplifier modulates and distorts a guitar note, which is what made it so difficult to identify BLC1 as interference.
I do hope that one of these days we'll find a clear, unambiguous alien signal. But this one wasn't it.
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