Signals of alien life?

An enigmatic radio signal picked up three times from the same area of the sky is a candidate for a call from intelligent alien life, according to New Scientist magazine.

The magazine reports in its Saturday edition that the SETI Institute has detected the radio signal on three separate occasions with the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico, says Discovery Channel.

But researchers connected with the project told BBC News Online on Thursday that no contact with extraterrestrials had been made.

"It's all hype and noise," said its chief scientist, Dr Dan Wertheimer. "We have nothing that is unusual. It's all out of proportion."

And Dr Paul Horowitz, of Harvard University, who specialises in hunting for possible alien contacts added: "It's not much of anything at all. We're not investigating it further.", reports BBC News.

According to the Indian Times, scientists have ruled out the possibility of the signal as interference from Earth, satellites or other cosmic sounds.

"It boggles my mind. We' re looking for something that screams 'Artificial' but this just doesn't do that. The signal is moving rapidly in frequency. You'd expect that from a transmitter on a rapidly-rotating planet," the journal quoted SETI scientist Eric Korpela as saying.

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