The signal has the characteristics of being artificial, so then the question becomes “is it ours?” Many potential candidate signals are found, but the vast majority are soon found to be explained by terrestrial sources, satellites in space, errors, etc. As Jason Wright at Penn State University told
Scientific American:
If you see such a signal and it’s not coming from the surface of Earth, you know you have detected extraterrestrial technology. Unfortunately, humans have launched a lot of extraterrestrial technology.
Sofia Sheikh at Penn State University, who headed the subsequent analysis for Breakthrough Listen and is the lead author on the upcoming paper, told