Alien hunters detect mystery radio signal from direction of Earthlike planet
- Narrowband signal picked up from direction of the Kepler-438 star meets initial criteria for extraterrestrial intelligence, preprint says
- Orbiting Kepler-438 in its habitable zone is one of the most Earthlike planets ever found outside the solar system
The candidate signal came from the direction of Kepler-438, a red dwarf star in the constellation Lyra – some 473 light years from the Earth, according to the team’s manuscript submitted to Research Square, a preprint service where researchers share unpublished work for community feedback.
Orbiting Kepler-438 in its habitable zone is Kepler-438b, one of the most Earthlike planets ever found outside the solar system.
The detection was made between November 2020 and September 2021, when the Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) in southwestern China carried out its first targeted “search for extraterrestrial intelligence” – or SETI – project.
Specifically, FAST was looking for “narrowband” radio signals – of the type widely used in human electromagnetic communications. They indicate the presence of technological sources in outer space, because such signals cannot be produced by any natural astrophysical process, and can only arise from either intentional transmission or leakage, according to the draft paper.