Scientists explain the enigma of a strange signal captured by a telescope

A team of scientists led by astronomer Fayin Wang, from the Chinese University of Nanjing, claims to have deciphered the enigma of strange radio bursts (scientifically known as FRBs) discovered in the last decade, which flash for a fraction of a second with a intense brightness, some moving like the hands of a clock, according to the VICE News website.

The researchers traced the origin of the most enigmatic of these signals, captured in 2020 by the FAST radio telescope and named FRB 20201124A, which drew attention to its strong flashes, which has been traced to a galaxy XXX light years from Earth, according to the study published Wednesday by Nature Communications.

The FAST radio telescope in 2021. China News Service via Getty Images

Scientists point out that the bursts come from a double star system, made up of a neutron magnetostar (a type of pulsar that expels enormous amounts of energy like X-ray or gamma-ray lightning) and a Be star, which rotates at speeds of up to 500 kilometers per second.

"The interaction between the radio bursts and the disk of the Be star can naturally explain the unusual observed features of FRB 20201124A," Fayin Wang told Motherboard.

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Looking for signs of extraterrestrial life

Closer to Earth (relatively, of course), in our Milky Way galaxy, the scientific initiative Breakthrough Listen scans a million stars for traces of extraterrestrial life thanks to funding from Russian-Israeli billionaire Yuri Milner.

But a couple of scientists have also discovered that such a search may lead to the chance discovery of civilizations much further afield, VICE News reports, based on what the background of images focused on the Milky Way shows.

The project aims to help restrict "the prevalence of very powerful extraterrestrial transmitters," according to the authors of the study, published on the preprint server arxiv.

"Other objects in the field include foreground stars and background stars in our own Milky Way galaxy," said study co-author Michael Garrett, "until recently, we didn't know how to take advantage of it because we didn't know the distance to these stars."