BLC1

BLC1 (Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1) is a candidate SETI radio signal reported on 18 December 2020, spatially coincident with the direction of the Solar system's closest star, Proxima Centauri.[1][2][3]

Parkes Observatory that detected BLC-1

Signal

The apparent shift in its frequency, consistent with the Doppler effect, may be inconsistent with what would be caused by the movement of Proxima b, a planet of Proxima Centauri.[4][5] The Doppler shift in the signal is the opposite of what would be expected from the Earth's spin, in that the signal increases in frequency rather than decreases.[6] Although the signal was detected by Parkes Radio Telescope during observations of Proxima Centauri, due to the beam angle of Parkes Radio telescope, the signal is more accurately described as coming from within a circle roughly 16 arcminutes in angular diameter, containing Proxima Centauri.[6] The signal has a frequency of 982.002 MHz.[7]

The radio signal was detected during 30 hours of observations conducted by Breakthrough Listen through the Parkes Observatory in Australia in April and May 2019.[8][9] As of December 2020, follow-up observations have failed to detect the signal again, a step necessary to confirm that the signal was a technosignature.[10]

Possibly correlated events

A paper by other astronomers released 10 days before the news report about BLC1 reports the detection of "a bright, long-duration optical flare, accompanied by a series of intense, coherent radio bursts" from Proxima Centauri also in April and May 2019. Their finding has not been put in direct relation to the BLC1 signal by scientists or media outlets as of January 2021 but implies that planets around Proxima Centauri and other red dwarfs are likely to be rather uninhabitable for humans and other currently known organisms.[11][12][13]

See also

References
  1. Drake, Nadia (2020-12-18). "Alien hunters detect mysterious radio signal from nearby star". National Geographic. Retrieved 2020-12-19.
  2. Whitwam, Ryan (23 December 2020). "Astronomers Spot Potentially Artificial Radio Signal From Nearby Star". ExtremeTech. Retrieved 23 December 2020.
  3. "Did Proxima Centauri Just Call to Say Hello? Not Really!". SETI Institute. Retrieved 2020-12-23.
  4. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/alien-hunters-discover-mysterious-signal-from-proxima-centauri/
  5. Sample, Ian (2020-12-18). "Scientists looking for aliens investigate radio beam 'from nearby star'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-12-19.
  6. "BLC1: A candidate signal around Proxima". Penn State U - blog Jason Wright.
  7. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/alien-hunters-discover-mysterious-signal-from-proxima-centauri/
  8. Overbye, Dennis (31 December 2020). "Was That a Dropped Call From ET? - A spooky radio signal showed up after a radio telescope was aimed at the next star over from our sun". The New York Times. Retrieved 31 December 2020.
  9. "Breakthrough Initiatives". breakthroughinitiatives.org. Retrieved 2020-12-19.
  10. Frank, Adam (31 December 2020). "A new frontier is opening in the search for extraterrestrial life - The reason we haven't found life elsewhere in the universe is simple: We haven't really looked until now". The Washington Post. Retrieved 1 January 2021.
  11. "Space weather discovery puts 'habitable planets' at risk". phys.org. Retrieved 22 January 2021.
  12. "Space weather in Proxima's vicinity dims hopes of habitable worlds | EarthSky.org". earthsky.org. Retrieved 22 January 2021.
  13. Zic, Andrew; Murphy, Tara; et al. (2020). "A Flare-type IV Burst Event from Proxima Centauri and Implications for Space Weather". The Astrophysical Journal. 905 (1): 23. arXiv:2012.04642. Bibcode:2020ApJ...905...23Z. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/abca90. S2CID 227745378. Retrieved 22 January 2021.
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