Signal from space! Mysterious radio signal detected by astronomers

In an astonishing development, astronomers have announced the remarkable discovery of a signal received from a distant galaxy. Just last year, intense bursts of radio waves were detected by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) radio telescope at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in British Columbia, Canada. Now astronomers have detected another signal that could mark a major breakthrough in the search for extraterrestrial life and has the potential to vastly expand our understanding of the universe.

According to Deccan Herald, astronomers from McGill University in Canada and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have detected a radio signal emanating from atomic hydrogen in an extremely distant galaxy. This signal was detected using the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT), an array of thirty fully steerable parabolic radio telescopes in Pune, India.

According to IISC, the distance traveled by the signal is the “greatest yet by a large margin” and was emitted when the universe was only 4.9 billion years old. This discovery and findings have been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Arnab Chakraborty, a postdoctoral researcher at McGill University, said: “It’s the equivalent of looking back in time 8.8 billion years.”

Nirupam Roy, associate professor, Department of Physics, IISc said: “Gravitational lensing magnifies the signal coming from a distant object to help us see into the early universe. In this particular case, the signal is deflected by the presence of another massive body, another galaxy, between the target and the observer, effectively resulting in a magnification of the signal by a factor of 30, allowing the telescope to pick it up.”

The discovery of the signal is a cause for excitement and speculation among scientists and the general public alike, in the hope that it could be a message from an extraterrestrial civilization.