Scientists receive radio signal sent by a galaxy 9 billion light years away 

Scientists on Earth received a radio signal that came from another galaxy almost 9 billion light-years away, the most distant galaxy to date, according to India’s McGill University. 

The radio signal, captured by India’s Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope, was the first time a signal of this kind has been captured from so far away, the university said. 

The signal properties indicate that it came from a gaseous neutron hydrogen in a galaxy named "SDSSJ0826+5630." However, the signal was emitted from the galaxy when the universe was only 4.9 billion years old. 

"It’s the equivalent to a look-back in time of 8.8 billion years," Arnab Chakraborty, a Post-Doctoral Researcher at McGill University, said in a statement.

This is not the first time that scientists have received signals from outer space. Last July, astronomers at MIT and other universities detected a signal from a distant galaxy. Similarly, in 2020, they detected a signal coming from Proxima Centauri. 

Many have been baffled by the unexpected life signals and have wondered whether they mean that there is life on another planet. Scientists, however, are not as keen on the idea, claiming that most of these signals have been “human-made radio interference.” 

"There are not many things in the universe that emit strictly periodic signals," Daniele Michilli, a postdoc at MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research said about the signal from Proxima Centauri at the time. "Examples that we know of in our own galaxy are radio pulsars and magnetars, which rotate and produce a beamed emission similar to a lighthouse. And we think this new signal could be a magnetar or pulsar on steroids."