A call from stars or an interference? Mysterious radio signal puzzles many

Nobody believes it was ET phoning, but radio astronomers admit they don’t have an explanation yet for a beam of radio waves that apparently came from the direction of the star Proxima Centauri.

“It’s some sort of technological signal. The question is whether it’s Earth technology or technology from somewhere out yonder,” said Sofia Sheikh, a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University leading a team studying the signal. She is part of Breakthrough Listen, a $100 million effort funded by billionaire Yuri Milner, to find alien radio waves. The project has now stumbled on its most intriguing pay dirt yet. Proxima Centauri is an inviting prospect for “out yonder.”

It is the closest known star to the sun, only 4.24 light-years from Earth, part of a triple-star system known as Alpha Centauri.

Proxima has at least two planets, one of which is a rocky world only slightly more massive than Earth.