From Dr. Becky.
Head to https://squarespace.com/drbecky to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code DRBECKY – AD | It is time to take out the trash. Because this month saw yet another bullshit claim that an announcement of the discovery of intelligent alien life was imminent. And I got mad. Maybe it’s just because this is the tip of the iceberg of so many fake discovery claims that circle the internet, especially when it comes to JWST, which are just all absolute trash. And this week I have reached my limit and I’m going to take it all out on BLC1 – breakthrough listen candidate 1 – a radio signal detected back in 2020 which was already shown to be radio interference back in 2021, but that this month a documentary film maker claimed to have spoken to the folks at the Breakthrough Listen project who are hunting for signs of intelligent alien life in radio data, and claims that an announcement from Breakthrough and the University of Oxford about BLC1 are imminent. I’m a researcher at Oxford, and I can tell you now we all laughed. So in this video, we’re going to dive into everything we know about BLC1 to put these rumours to rest completely. First starting with:
1) BLC1’s detection back in 2020 and why it was initially thought to be a promising “technosignature” of intelligent alien life, 2) how BLC1 was ruled out as a real “technosignature", and 3) how no recurring signal has been detected since.
Smith et al. (2021; BLC1 discovery) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.08007
Sheikh et al. (2021; BLC1 is RFI) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.06350
Sheikh et al. (2021; no repeat observations of BLC1) – https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/ac33b2
Choza et al. (2023; extra-galactic technosignature search) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2312.03943
00:00 – Introduction
02:20 – Squarespace AD
03:42 – BLC1’s detection in 2020 and why it was thought to be a candidate "technosignature"
09:07 – How BLC1 was ruled out as technosignature and was just radio interference
10:58 – BLC1 has never been detected again
11:44 – Bloopers
Video filmed on a Sony ⍺7 IV
Video edited by Martino Gasparrini: https://www.fiverr.com/mgs_editing
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👩🏽💻 I’m Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford (Christ Church). I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don’t know. If you’ve ever wondered about something in space and couldn’t find an answer online – you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars.
