Is the universe ours for the taking? Is the vastness of space merely a setting for the singular, human experience within this plane of being? Are we it for the cosmos?
These are the sorts of questions that appear impossible to answer with any certainty, particularly as evidence of extraterrestrial life has been hard to come by.
This week, however, China is admitting a major breakthrough in the search for intelligence beyond our planet.
China said its giant Sky Eye telescope may have picked up signs of alien civilizations, according to a report by the state-backed Science and Technology Daily, which then appeared to have deleted the report and posts about the discovery.
The narrow-band electromagnetic signals detected by Sky Eye — the world’s largest radio telescope — differ from previous ones captured and the team is further investigating them, the report said, citing Zhang Tonjie, chief scientist of an extraterrestrial civilization search team co-founded by Beijing Normal University, the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of California, Berkeley.
Something seemed a bit fishy, however.
It isn’t clear why the report was apparently removed from the website of the Science and Technology Daily, the official newspaper of China’s science and technology ministry, though the news had already started trending on social network Weibo and was picked up by other media outlets, including state-run ones.
There is still plenty of testing to be done on the signals to determine their true origin, but the excitement surrounding the stellar static is certainly compelling.
