Astronomers Finally Found a Clue Behind One of Space’s Strangest Radio Signal Mysteries
You hear a lot about mysterious bursts of radio signals coming from distant parts of the universe. In our more fanciful moments, it’s easy to imagine them as errant little scraps of alien communication that somehow slipped through the cracks of space and landed here on Earth. They are usually nothing of the sort. More often than not, the explanation turns out to be some exotic but entirely natural astrophysical thing. According to a new study published in the journal Nature Astronomy , astronomers may have finally found a crucial clue behind a particularly weird set of repeating radio signals known as long-period transients, a set of radio bursts that have been a real head-scratcher for scientists. Mysterious Space Signals Have Puzzled Astronomers for Years. Now They Have Finally Found a Clue. They’re called long-period transients because they repeat, but very slowly. Since 2022, astronomers have identified only about a dozen of them. Some emit bursts every few...