{"id":92292,"date":"2025-08-25T19:24:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T19:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/92292\/"},"modified":"2025-08-25T19:24:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T19:24:10","slug":"scientists-discover-origin-of-mysterious-signal-from-deep-space-sent-to-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/92292\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists discover origin of mysterious signal from deep space sent to Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists have pinpointed the origin of a mysterious radio burst from deep space, discovering an unknown object sitting in a nearby galaxy that appears to have created the signal.<\/p>\n

A team from the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and McGill University in Canada<\/a> revealed that\u00a0one of the brightest fast radio bursts (FRBs) ever detected came from the galaxy called NGC 4141, just\u00a0130 million light-years away from Earth.<\/p>\n

FRBs are incredibly quick and powerful bursts of radio waves<\/a> in space that last just a few milliseconds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They are thought to come from extreme events in space, such as the explosive deaths of massive stars (supernovas) that leave behind super-dense, magnetic neutron stars called magnetars.<\/a><\/p>\n

However, some scientists have wondered if FRBs could be artificial, meaning they might come from advanced alien<\/a> technology, like powerful radio signals sent by an extraterrestrial civilization.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This powerful burst detected in March, named FRB 20250316A or ‘RBFLOAT,’ is the first to be tracked down by astronomers to a precise location within a neighboring galaxy.<\/p>\n

Moreover, using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), they spotted a faint infrared light, they’ve dubbed NIR-1, which might be hiding the true source of the radio signal.<\/p>\n

Mawson Sammons, a postdoctoral researcher at McGill, said: ‘This marks the beginning of a new era where we can routinely localize even single, non-repeating bursts to pinpoint precision. That’s a game-changer for understanding what’s behind them.’<\/p>\n

\"Scientists <\/p>\n

Scientists have found the exact source of a fast radio burst in deep space for the first time (Artist’s impression)<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The signal came from a nearby galaxy, called NGC 4141, which is just 130 million light-years from Earth<\/p>\n

The FRB came from the direction of the Big Dipper, a well-known constellation in the sky.<\/p>\n

It was traced to a small area in the outskirts of NGC 4141, about the size of a star cluster (a group of stars within larger galaxies).<\/p>\n

Although it’s 130 million light-years from Earth, NGC 4141 is relatively close compared to other FRBs humans have detected, which came from billions of light-years away on the opposite side of the universe.<\/p>\n

The discovery was made using a Canadian radio telescope called CHIME, which is designed to catch these rare bursts.<\/p>\n

CHIME recently got an upgrade with ‘outrigger’ telescopes spread across North America, from British Columbia to California.<\/p>\n

These extra telescopes helped pinpoint the exact location of the signal with incredible accuracy, like spotting a coin from 130 miles away.<\/p>\n

After finding the burst, scientists used JWST to take detailed infrared pictures of the same spot, revealing the faint object that might be a local star or something else.<\/p>\n

Edo Berger, a professor of astronomy at Harvard, said in a statement<\/a>: ‘Being able to isolate individual stars around an FRB is a huge gain over previous searches, and it begins to tell us what sort of stellar systems could produce these powerful bursts.’\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The James Webb Space Telescope helped researchers detect a faint infrared light, they’ve dubbed NIR-1, which could be hiding the source that produced the radio burst<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

The James Webb Space Telescope is the most powerful ever built. It allows astronomers to peer across time and space to see the earliest formations in our universe<\/p>\n

Fast radio bursts like RBFLOAT are like a sudden, loud ‘beep’ of invisible energy that vanishes before you can blink.<\/p>\n

Although they’re made of the same type of invisible energy that carries music to a car radio, they pack a huge amount of energy, similar to all the power of a city flashing its lights for a split second.<\/p>\n

However, unlike a radio signal on Earth carrying voices or music, an FRB delivers a sudden static ‘pop’ that disappears right away.<\/p>\n

Currently, scientists have several theories about what might have caused this particular radio burst, as well as other FRBs that regularly repeat throughout the cosmos.<\/p>\n

NIR-1 might be a red giant star, a star near the end of its life that has expanded and brightened.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The researchers suggested that this star could be hiding an unseen companion star, like a magnetar, which triggered the FRB by pulling material from the dying red giant.<\/p>\n

The FRB could have also come from a magnetar in a nearby cluster of young, massive stars, even though the magnetar itself is too dim to see from Earth.<\/p>\n

A third possibility the study authors proposed was that the infrared light is a fading ‘echo’ from the burst itself, not a star, and scientists plan to observe it again to see if it dims, which could clarify the source.<\/p>\n

\"Fast <\/p>\n

Fast radio bursts are believed to come from natural sources in space, but some scientists have theorized that they could be signals from alien races (Stock Image)<\/p>\n

If the source of the brief signal was extraterrestrial, it could look just like a natural FRB if they sent a short, powerful radio burst out into space.<\/p>\n

However, FRBs like the one being studied this year have shown no signs of having any intelligent patterns or codes that contain messages.<\/p>\n

Amanda Cook,\u00a0a McGill-based postdoctoral researcher, said in a press release<\/a>: ‘This result marks a turning point: instead of just detecting these mysterious flashes, we can now see exactly where they’re coming from.’<\/p>\n

‘It opens the door to discovering whether they’re caused by dying stars, exotic magnetic objects, or something we haven’t thought of yet,’ Cook added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have pinpointed the origin of a mysterious radio burst from deep space, discovering an unknown object sitting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92293,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[97,59,90,124,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-92292","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-dailymail","9":"tag-gb","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-sciencetech","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}