'Weird' origin of radio waves, which travelled eight billion years to Earth, found. Is it alien signal or...?

The high-energy burst of radio waves, which recently made headlines for travelling for eight billion years in space before reachingEarth, had a "weird" place of origin, which scientists have now identified.

The radio wave, which is called a fast radio burst (FRB), was one of those hundreds of fleeting blasts of energy which have been detected by scientists across the years.

When it was detected, some astronomers made a wild guess that it could be a signal sent by alien life to our planet.

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Here's what scientists found about the origin of radio waves

Scientists, while studying the FRB, found that it had originated from a cluster of galaxies which were present in the universe when it was only five billion years old.

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The FRB, which has been dubbed as FRB 20220610A, was discovered as the most farthest and powerful signal ever detected by astronomers.

It has now been found that the home of radio signals are seven tightly packed galaxies, as reported by The Daily Mail.

"None have ever been seen in such a compact group," stated astronomer Yuxin (Vic) Dong, who was part of the team at Northwestern University which studied the origin of FRB 20220610A."Its birthplace is truly rare," Dong said.

The head of the team of scientists atNorthwestern, Alexa Gordon said, "It's these types of environments, these weird ones, that are driving us toward better understanding the mystery of FRBs."

These flashes of light, which appeared as the radio band of the electromagnetic spectrum, were most likely temporary and appeared randomly from space, as per scientists.

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Astronomer Wen-fai Dong, who looked into FRB 20220610A, stated that in the new Hubble images, these galaxies appeared in oblong shapes or 'tidal tales' which suggested that they may have had collisions through which fast radio burst may have birthed.

"Without the Hubble's imaging, it would still remain a mystery as to whether this FRB originated from one monolithic galaxy or from some type of interacting system," said Gordon, in aNASA statement.

Northwestern astronomerWen-fai Fong, who was also part of the project, also confirmed the oblong shapes or 'tidal tales' of some of the seven galaxies which hinted at the chances of collisions.

"There are some signs that the group members are 'interacting. In other words, they could be trading materials or possibly on a path to merging," Fong said.

(With inputs from agencies)