According to a report by the state-backed Science and Technology Daily, China's massive Sky Eye observatory may have detected signals of alien civilizations. However, the paper and posts about the discovery appear to have been removed.

The narrow-band electromagnetic signals detected by Sky Eye, the world's largest radio telescope, differ from previous ones captured, according to the report, which 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.

It is unclear why the report was apparently removed from the website of the Science and Technology Daily, the official newspaper of China's science and technology ministry, despite the fact that the news had already begun trending on the social network Weibo and had been picked up by other media outlets, including state-run ones.

Sky Eye, which has a diameter of 500 metres (1,640 feet) and is located in China's southern Guizhou region, will formally begin its hunt for alien life in September 2020. According to the paper, the researchers noticed two sets of suspicious signals in 2020 while processing data acquired in 2019, and discovered another suspicious signal in 2022 from observation data of exoplanet targets.

According to Zhang, China's Sky Eye is particularly sensitive in the low-frequency radio band and plays a crucial role in the hunt for alien civilizations.

The odd signals, however, might be radio interference and need additional examination, he noted.

Bloomberg News' calls to the Science and Technology Daily went unanswered.

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