ISLAMABAD – For the first time in history, Scientists have detected a radiosignals from outer space that repeats at regular intervals.
USA Today reported that The series of so-called “fast radio bursts” – whichare very short-lived pulses of radio waves that come from across theuniverse – were detected approximately once an hour for four days and thensuddenly stopped, only to start up again 12 days later.
This cycle of radio signals repeated every 16.35 days for over a year,according to a new paper about the research.
The bursts originated from a distant galaxy some 500 million light-yearsaway.
“The discovery of a 16.35-day periodicity in a repeating FRB source is animportant clue to the nature of this object,” the scientists said in thepaper.
The repeating pattern, reports Science X Network, “suggests the sourcecould be a celestial body of some kind orbiting around a star or anotherbody. In such a scenario, the signals would cease when they are obstructedby the other body.
“But that still does not explain how a celestial body could be sending outsuch signals on a regular basis,” Science X said. “Another possibility isthat stellar winds might be alternately boosting or blocking signals from abody behind them. Or it could be that the source is a celestial body thatis rotating.”
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It’s not likely to be aliens, the Massachusetts Institute of Technologysaid in a statement, because the signals are a sign of energetic eventsthat are on the extreme scale of the cosmos. “Even a highly intelligentspecies would be very unlikely to produce energies like this. And there isno detectable pattern so far that would suggest there’s a sentient hand atplay,” MIT said.
Fast radio bursts last only a few milliseconds, making it difficult toaccurately determine where they have come from.
“One of the greatest mysteries in astronomy right now is the origin ofshort, dramatic bursts of radio light seen across the universe, known asfast radio bursts or FRBs,” said the Max Planck Institute for RadioAstronomy, in a statement.
“Although they last for only a thousandth of a second, there are nowhundreds of records of these enigmatic sources,” the Institute said.
Since 2007, according to MIT, most of the radio bursts are “one-offs” but asmall amount are “repeaters” which recur in the same place.
