Scientists still cannot explain the cause or origin of the ‘fast radio bursts’ which bombard Earth

An artificial intelligence designed to detect and analyse mysterious signals which come from outside the Milky Way has made its first discovery.

The brief flashes are called ‘fast radio bursts’ and last just a few milliseconds, making them extremely difficult to spot.

We still don’t know what causes the powerful pulses, but scientists have blamed them on everything from black holes to alien civilisations.

Now an astronomer from Swinburne University in Australia has built an automated system to pick up FRBs, which have travelled incredible distances through deep space and are often very ancient.


Wael Farah used his system to detect five bursts.



‘It is fascinating to discover that a signal that travelled halfway through the universe,’ he said.

Scientists cannot rule out the possibility that extraterrestrials produced the unexplained transmissions

FRB’s were first detected accidentally in 2007 when a burst signal was spotted in radio astronomy data collected in 2001.

A burst was recently observed and traced to a spiral galaxy 7.9 billion years away which resembles our own home star system.

In 2017, Professor Avi Loeb, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in the US, argued that FRBs could be evidence of incredibly advanced alien technology.

He proposed that the FRBs could be leakage from planet-sized alien transmitters.

Rather than being designed for communication, they would more likely be used to propel giant space ships powered by light sails.

A light sail works by bouncing light, or in this case radio beams, off a huge reflective sheet to provide forward thrust.

Prof Loeb, who discusses the idea in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, said: ‘An artificial origin is worth contemplating and checking.’