Radio signal detected from beyond solar system

Remember that WOW signal detected by SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) from 1977? The signal, witnessed by a project volunteer, was so strong that he quickly circled the indication on a printout and scribbled the phrase “Wow!” in the margin. Dubbed the Wow! signal, it's considered by some to be the most likely candidate from an artificial, extraterrestrial source ever discovered, but it's never been detected again. And now this. A Durban University of Technology teacher and his students have apparently found the first radio signal from outside our Solar System, possibly from an alien source. Yes, you read it correctly the first time, but go ahead, read it again. On the evening of July 28th, 2008, at 21h14 hours (local time) the Indlebe Radio Telescope, detected a strong source from Sagittarius A, the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, approximately 30 thousand light years away from Earth. To put this achievement into perspective, think about it this way. The energy gained by a grain of rice falling 2 cm in Earth’s gravity, onto a plate, is more than the total energy received by all the radio telescopes in the world operating since 1960. The Indlebe project was initiated in 2006 by the Department of Electronic Engineering with the primary object of providing engineering projects and research opportunities to undergraduate and postgraduate students working on a real-world complex electronic system. A secondary objective was to provide a vehicle to increase awareness and interest of secondary school students in the fields of Science, Engineering and Technology (SET), and to promote local awareness of the celebration of the International Year of Astronomy in 2009 (IYA2009).

The project leader, Stuart MacPherson, said his students where amazed when they realized the telescope had picked up a signal. “We had made significant changes to the receiver to increase its sensitivity. When we went in that morning to check the data, we found that it had detected a source,” he said.