China finds – then loses – traces of extraterrestial civilisations

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Year of the ET

Year of the ET Feedback is crossing our fingers for Zhang Tongjie, China’s foremost proponent of SETI, the astronomy field’s search for extraterrestrial intelligence. This mild-mannered academic has spent the past eight years funding his own search for intelligent alien life, labouring from his home office, in between lectures and marking student work.

He got his big break a couple of years ago when he was given 17.5 hours to gather data using Sky Eye, a 500-metre aperture radio telescope in China’s Guizhou province. On 15 June, a report on the website of the official newspaper …