Scientists have detected mysterious radio signals from outer space for the first time. The unexplainable radio signals are coming from an object at a distance of 500 million light-years away. The short-lived pulses of radio waves repeat at regular intervals, 16-day to be precise. But researchers have failed to understand why. The study finds that it is for the first time when such a reliable pattern has been detected in the signals, known as FRBs or fast radio bursts. These radio signals are being received for over a year, according to the new research. The pattern suggests that radio waves could be originating from some celestial body. This body could be orbiting around another body or a star. In such circumstances, the signals would get obstructed by the other body.
But researchers say that even this cannot explain how a celestial body could send radio waves on such a regular basis. It is also being believed that signals might be getting blocked by stellar winds from a body behind them. The first 28 cycles of waves were recorded in the time frame of September 2018 and October 2019. It was observed with the help of the CHIME radio telescope in British Columbia. The 16-day periodicity is a significant hint about the nature of this object, authors of the study said.
According to researchers, fast radio burst was observed for the first in 2007. However, the signals were very weak and lasted only for a thousandth of a second. This made it very difficult to study and have mystified scientists ever since. So far scientists have spotted hundreds of FRBs but only a few of them have repeated themselves. These FRBs have been observed from every corner of the universe. There is one thing that researchers are sure about – aliens are not the source of these radio waves. Scientists believe that studying more such FRBs is the only way to know more about the source and solve this mystery.