‘Astronomers have identified the first reliable pattern of a fast radio burst (FRB) source in deep space, but still don’t know what causes the phenomenon.
Such signals have baffled scientists since their discovery in 2014, as their origin is a complete mystery.
But scientists have now found one sporadic radio burst source 500million light years away expressing a specific pattern.
It belts out a signal for a few milliseconds once every hour, every hour for four days. It then goes silent for 12 days before resuming its 16 day cycle.
This is the first time a FRB pattern has been spotted by astronomers but the underlying reasons are unknown.
However, scientists have all but ruled out alien communication as 16 days for a message would be impractical and inefficient.
The pattern was discovered after 400 days of observations by researchers at CHIME (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment).
Some radio bursts detected on Earth are one-offs, coming from a random space and never seen again.
But some repeat several times, although it was previously believed this was done at random.
Now the astronomers at CHIME, who declined to comment on the finding, proved this not to be the case by studying FRB 180916.’
