There’s a telescope in China called the Sky Eye or FAST. It’s the size of 30 football fields.  It’s the world’s largest radio telescope.

It has been searching for extraterrestrial signals since it was launched in September 2020. 

On Tuesday,  Science and Technology Daily, the official newspaper of China’s Ministry of Science and Technology, reported that signals from a possible alien civilization were detected. 

The announcement was made on China’s government-backed science website, but was immediately deleted. It is unclear why it was deleted, and the information has already circulated online.

“Sky Eye telescope may have picked up signs of life beyond Earth, according to a report by the state-backed Science and Technology Daily, which then appeared to have deleted the report and posts about the discovery,” according to Bloomberg news.

Chief scientist, Zhang Tongjie, and his ET search team detected suspicious signals in 2020 and this year from planets outside our solar system. The scientist said it is possible that the signals represent radio interference.

According to the report, scientists at Beijing Normal University found “several cases of possible technological traces and extraterrestrial civilizations from outside the earth.” 

The report can still be found online.

Zhang Tongjie said that they detected several narrow-band electromagnetic signals different from the ones discovered in the past, and that his team is doing more investigation to determine the origin of the signals.

The second largest telescope in the world is at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Sky Eye can scan double the sky area and can transfer much more sensitive signals. 

In order to construct the Sky Eye telescope, a small village of 65 people was destroyed, and about 9,000 people surrounding the village were relocated and compensated, according to Chinese government officials. A three-mile radius around the telescope was created to remove electromagnetic interference. 

The construction cost $180 million. 

Chinese news media has not responded to inquiries.