Over the past eight years, astronomers have been scratching their heads over a series of strange radio signals stemming from somewhere in the universe.
And now, the mystery has become even more confusing.
In a finding that the researchers deem “very hard to explain,” the so-called "fast radio bursts" follow a weirdly specific pattern.
Study co-author Michael Hippke, a scientist at the Institute for Data Analysis in Neukirchen-Vluyn, Germany, told New Scientist that “the new findings could either be considered new physics, like a new kind of pulsar, or, in the end, if we can exclude everything else, an E.T."
According to another astronomer, “these fast radio bursts could conceivably be 'wake up calls' from other societies, or on the other hand, they could be perfectly natural, astrophysical phenomena."
11 bursts have been detected since 2007, the latest of which was captured by the Parkes radio telescope in May 2014.
Hippke said the pulses are probably produced by some yet-unidentified source here on Earth that emanates short-frequency radio waves followed by high-frequency ones, “it could perhaps be something as simple as a cell phone base station,” he said.
“If that's not the explanation, it's possible they come from a new, unknown kind of cosmic object in deep space.”
In another words, they could be aliens.
Whatever the signals are, stay tuned!