US scientists detect radio signals from outer space

American scientists detected a sequence of “fast radio bursts" recurring in regular intervals, from the universe, according to a USA Today report on Wednesday, February 12.

According to a new paper about the research, the signals repeated over a cyclic period of 16.35 days for more than one year, from a galaxy about 500 million light-years away.

The first instance of the repeating signals was caught by Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME), a radio telescope designed and built by several groups of Canadian scientists, the report said.

"The discovery of a 16.35-day periodicity in a repeating FRB source is an important clue to the nature of this object," the scientists said in the paper.

According to a Science X Network report, “The repeating pattern suggests the source could be a celestial body of some kind orbiting around a star or another body. In such a scenario, the signals would cease when they are obstructed by the other body."

"But that still does not explain how a celestial body could be sending out such signals on a regular basis," Science X said.

"Another possibility is that stellar winds might be alternately boosting or blocking signals from a body behind them. Or it could be that the source is a celestial body that is rotating,” the report mentioned.

Meanwhile, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said in a statement pointed out that it's not likely to be aliens since the signals are an indication of energetic events that are on the extreme scale of the cosmos, according to the US Today report.

"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," MIT told in the statement mentioned in the report.