A Signal from Proxima Centauri and the Existence of Alien Life.

The 64-meter Parkes radio telescope in Australia picked up the faint signal while observing Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf 4.25 light-years from Earth. This feeble star has at least two planets, one of which is a super-Earth with at least 1.17 Earth masses that orbits in the star’s habitable zone.

ESA/Hubble & NASA

Proxima Centauri is the closest star to our Sun. It is a small, low-mass star located 4.2465 light-years away from the Sun in the southern constellation of Centaurus. Its Latin name means the "nearest [star] of Centaurus". This object was discovered in 1915 by Robert Innes.

Distance to Earth: 4.243 light-years

Radius: 107,280 km

Astronomers behind the most extensive search yet for alien life are investigating an intriguing radio wave signal that appears to have come from the direction of Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the sun. when the telescope was turned away from the star, the signal vanished.“The narrow beam of radio waves was picked up during 30 hours of observations by the Parkes telescope in Australia in April and May last year. Analysis of the beam has been underway for some time and scientists have yet to identify a terrestrial culprit such as ground-based equipment or a passing satellite”, the Guardian reported.

Penn State University astronomer Jason Wright wrote on his blog- “It could be from the orbital motion of a planet, or from a free-floating transmitter, or from a transmitter on a moon,”

The signal appears to have come from the direction of Proxima Centauri. It is the first serious candidate since the ‘Wow! signal’.The Wow! signal was a strong narrowband radio signal received on August 15, 1977, by Ohio State University's Big Ear radio telescope in the United States, then used to support the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

However, with the vastness of space, it is difficult for us to find alien intelligence. Maybe there is life beyond earth and one day we will find it.

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