Scientists participating in the Search for Alien Project are now searching for a mysterious radio-wave signal that appears to have come from Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun.
Watchman The results were reported Friday, and they wrote that emissions were captured within 30 hours of observations by the Parkes Telescope in Australia in April and May of last year.
Scientists working on the Breakthrough Listen Project have been investigating the emissions since their discovery, though the source remains unclear. However, the Guardian reported that scientists have found that the shift in the beam’s frequency corresponds to the movement of the planet.
One individual in the astronomy community who spoke on the condition of anonymity because work is continuing told The Guardian that the ray that appears to have come from the direction of Proxima Centauri has not been observed again since the initial observation.
The source told the newspaper that the latest ray is “the first serious candidate since” Wow! Signal, a radio signal caught by the Big Ear Radio Observatory in Ohio in 1977.
Breakthrough Listen was launched in 2015 by Silicon Valley science and technology investor Yuri Milner, as he scans the million stars closest to Earth and “listens to messages from the closest 100 galaxies to our galaxy” to find “evidence of civilizations beyond Earth” to The project Location.
At the project’s launch event in 2015 at the Royal Society in London, the late physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking described the research as “extremely important”.
“Humankind has a dire need to explore, learn and know,” Hawking, who passed away in 2018 after a decades-long battle with ALS, said at the time. “We are also social creatures. It is important for us to know if we are alone in the dark.”
Proxima Centauri, located 4.2 light years from Earth, is known to have at least two planets orbiting it. According to the Guardian, one is thought to be a gas giant, while the other is thought to be a rocky planet about 17 percent larger than Earth, and is known as Proxima B.
The planet is located within the “habitable zone” of Proxima Centauri, which means that it is at a temperature level that allows water to flow, which has long led to speculation about whether life exists on this planet.
However, Published report In the Astrophysical Journal last week by a team of Australian researchers He indicated that the planets are around Proxima Centauri is likely to be exposed to dangerous radiation Stellar flares and plasma extrusion.
“Earth has a very strong planetary magnetic field that protects us from these intense outbursts of solar plasma. But because Proxima Centauri is a cold little red dwarf star, this means that this habitable region is very close to the star; much closer in than Mercury in relation to our sun,” the author said Principal Andrew Zetsch, who conducted the research while at the University of Sydney, said in a press release.
“What our research shows is that this makes the planets extremely vulnerable to dangerous ionizing radiation that can effectively sterilize the planets,” he added.
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