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What’s out there? Scientists receive repeating radio pattern signal from space

Scientists have a mystery from outer space.

For only the second time, they have received a radio burst from space that has a pattern embedded in it.

The signals are called fast radio bursts, or FRB, and are millisecond-long bursts of radio waves, CNN reported.

Experts say the signal is coming from a dwarf galaxy 3 billion light-years away, USA Today reported.

Normally radio bursts are sent one time and don’t repeat, but FRBs are short and are repeated multiple times. Usually it’s either sporadic or in a cluster.

But FRB 180916.J0158+65 is different. It happens every 16.35 days in a pattern of four days of a burst or two every hour and then 12 hours of silence, CNN reported.

FRB 121102, discovered in 2016, is also different. Recently astronomers found it is the second one to have a repeating pattern. That one has bursts over 90 days, silence for 67 days and repeats every 157 days, according to CNN.

Scientists say the bursts may come because whatever is producing the signal may be in orbit with another astrophysical body like a star or a black hole, USA Today reported.

But don’t get your hopes up that the FRBs are a sign of aliens.

According to USA Today, Massachusetts Institute of Technology said: “The signals are a sign of energetic events that are on the extreme scale of the cosmos. Even a highly intelligent species would be very unlikely to produce energies like this. And there is no detectable pattern so far that would suggest there’s a sentient hand at play."

To read more about the study, click here.