Radio waves that took 8 billion years to reach Earth hint at signs of alien life: Expert

An unknown event occurred in a distant galaxy some eight billion years ago which sent a very powerful blast of radio waves across the universe.

Now, after travelling for eight billion years, the radio signals finally reached Earth on June 10 only to last less than a thousandth of a second. However, a radio telescope installed in Australia somehow was able to pick up the signal.

The flash, which took place in the cosmos eight billion years ago and has now been detected, was a fast radio burst (FRB), which is a little-understood phenomenon first found in 2007.

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The astronomers found that this specific FRB was more powerful and came from a much farther place which has not been recorded yet. It was also determined that the cosmic event occurred when the universe was less than half its current age.

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Scientists are clueless on what causes FRBs

Astronomers have till now not been able to find what exactly leads to FRBs, making them one of the greatest astronomical mysteries.

A lot of theories have been given to scientists to explain its occurrence with a Harvard University professor even suggesting that the radio signals might be signs of alien life, CBS News reported.

However, distant dead stars - known as magnetars - are held as prime suspects by the scientists, since they are the most magnetic objects in the universe.

Astrophysicist at Australia's Swinburne University, Ryan Shannon, while speaking to AFP, said that it was "mind-blowing" that the radio burst was spotted by the ASKAP radio telescope in Western Australia last year.

"We were lucky to be looking at that little spot in the sky for that one millisecond after the eight billion years the pulse had travelled to catch it," said Shannon, who was also co-author of a study which spoke about the find in the journal Science.

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Radio signals released same amount of energy which sunemits in 30 years

He said that this specific FRB easily defeated the previous record holder which was only five billion light years away.

According to him, the radio signal's pulse was very powerful and it released the same amount of energy which the sun emits over 30 years.

Shannon did not deny the possibility of hundreds of thousands of FRBs flashing across the sky every day.

However, even though thousands of them have been detected till now, scientists have just managedto figure outwhere 50 of them came from.

The researchers decided to use the Very Large Telescope in Chile to understand where the latest radio burst, known as FRB 20220610A, came from.

This came from the signal which originated from a particularly clumpy galaxy which may have merged with one or two other galaxies and hence, created the bizarre magnetar.

(With inputs from agencies)