Could it be ET? We’re not sure (we do travel, not scientific research), but the Arecibo Observatory captured a so-called ‘fast radio burst’ – and it’s one of the most mysterious and rare deep-space events.
This isn’t new, of course. The Parkes radio telescope in Australia has already picked up such sounds but because other instruments had failed to detect them until now (despite the fact scientists think they happen thousands of times a day), sceptics thought that the Parkes radio telescope might be picking up signals originating from sources on or near Earth.
The new findings were published in The Astrophysical Journal.
“Our result is important because it eliminates any doubt that these radio bursts are truly of cosmic origin,” Victoria Kaspi, an astrophysics professor at McGill University in Montreal and Principal Investigator said. “The radio waves show every sign of having come from far outside our galaxy – a really exciting prospect.”
On Thursday, a fireball, which turned out to a piece of a Russian rocket, streaked across parts of the night sky in Victoria and Tasmania – prompting Twitter speculation of a possible alien encounter.
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