Astronomers have been listening to radio waves from space for decades. In addition to being a proven means of studying stars, galaxies, quasars and other celestial objects, radio astronomy is one of the main ways in which scientists have searched for signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence (ETI). And while nothing definitive has been found to date, there have been a number of incidents that have raised hopes of finding an “alien signal”.
In the most recent case, scientists from the Arecido Observatory recently announced the detection of a strange radio signal coming from Ross 128 – a red dwarf star system located just 11 light-years from Earth. As always, this has fueled speculation that the signal could be evidence of an extra-terrestrial civilization, while the scientific community has urged the public not to get their hopes up.
The discovery was part of a campaign being conducted by Abel Méndez – the director of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory (PHL) in Peurto Rico – and Jorge Zuluaga of the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences at the University of Antioquia, Colombia. Inspired by the recent discoveries around Proxima Centauri and TRAPPIST-1, the GJ 436 campaign relied on data from Arecibo Observatory to look for signs of exoplanets around nearby red dwarf stars.
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