KAMPALA: The internet is abuzz with rumors that China may have picked up signals from an alien civilization, a report by space.com reveals.
It says that the news centers on observations by China’s “Sky Eye” – the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), which is located in southwestern Guizhou province.
ResearchFinds notes that one report, by the state-backed Science and Technology Daily, cited 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.
Zhang is reported to have said that the team spotted two sets of intriguing signals in 2020 while sifting through FAST data gathered in 2019. Another signal was apparently picked up this year in data gathered on exoplanet targets.
However, Zhang reportedly also underscored the possibility that the signals are products of radio interference. Follow-up FAST observations are reportedly on tap. (The Science and Technology Daily story has since been removed from the outlet’s site.)
Back here in Uganda, the country has completed the development of its first satellite, bringing closer the country’s outer space and space technology aspirations. In April 2020, Uganda began the path to launch its first satellite into space by sending three graduate students to obtain training in satellite design, manufacture, and testing as part of a global programme initiated in 2015 by the Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan.
On Tuesday, May 10 2022, the three students, namely; Edgar Mujuni, Derick Tebusweke and Bonny Omara, successfully finished their work on a 10 cubic metre satellite named PearlAfricaSat-1, which they have now handed over to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) for final testing, reported africanews.space.
The website quoted Dr Monica Musenero, the minister of Science, Technology, and Innovation, as having noted that JAXA would, in the next five to eight days, carry out testing on Uganda’s first satellite and hand it over to United States of America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for transportation to the international space station. The satellite will subsequently deploy from the ISS into low earth orbit, tentatively in August this year. For more on the China story, click here: https://www.space.com/possible-seti-signal-china-fast-telescope
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