A joint US-German research study was conducted to find out whether mysterious signals from outer space were sent out by extraterrestrial beings.
The research paper, titled 'Discrete Steps in Dispersion Measures Of Fast Radio Bursts', released on 30 March, 2015 takes into consideration the possibility of extraterrestrials sending "mysterious signals" from space.
The study notes that some of the recent radio signals from space could have "an artificial source (human or non-human)" at its origin. The series of mysterious pulsing signals, known as Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), form a strange unexplained mathematical pattern in multiples of a single number, 187.5.
Astronomers for long have speculated that aliens may attempt to establish contact with human beings via a mathematical message such as codes that count out prime numbers.
According to Newscientist, telescopes have been encountering FRBs since 2001. Since then there has been total 10 such occurrences where these FRBs last just a few milliseconds before erupting with about as much energy as the sun releases in a month.
The most recent FRB occurred in 2014 when the Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia, caught a burst in action for the first time.
The neat pattern of the radio signal has perplexed the scientists. One of the authors, John Learned at the University of Hawaii in Manoa noted that "If the pattern is real, It is very, very hard to explain."
Meanwhile, quite a few are also excited about the possibility towards discovering alien life. Jill Tarter, astronomer and the Bernard M Oliver Chair for SETI - an institute dedicated to the search for life in the universe - agrees that more research is needed in interpreting whether these signals were engineered by aliens.
"Since the Lorimer pulse [in 2007], I've commented that these could be engineered signals — in my case I just wondered if the engineers were extraterrestrial. More data will tell us what the right interpretation is," Tarter told Global News.
