Alien Signals: Astronomers Detect Strongest Radio Signal Outside Milky Way

Scientists detected the most powerful fast radio burst (FRB) ever recorded. And it is not coming from our own galaxy.

According to the scientists, although the high-energy radio pulse lasted only a few milliseconds, it could help us understand more about the FRBs and the gaps that exist between galaxies, called the cosmic web. FRBs are not widely understood because they are transient and rare.

"FRBs are extremely short but intense pulses of radio waves, each only lasting about a millisecond. Some are discovered by accident and no two bursts look the same," Dr. Shannon, from the Curtin node of ICRAR (the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research) and Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) said in a press release.

"This particular FRB is the first detected to date to contain detailed information about the cosmic web - regarded as the fabric of the Universe - but it is also unique because its travel path can be reconstructed to a precise line of sight and back to an area of space about a billion light years away that contains only a small number of possible home galaxies."

DNA India said the ultrabright cosmic flash named FRB 150807 is the 18th FRB detected to date since they were first discovered in 2001. It was captured by CSIRO's Parkes radio telescope and analysed by a system developed by the supercomputing group led by Professor Matthew Bailes from Swinburne University in Australia.

So far, explanations put forward for FRBs have included signals from extraterrestrial intelligence. But there is no concrete proof to strengthen this theory.

The scientists who looked into the signal discovered that the radio bursts, were followed by a powerful release of radiation, which is billion times more powerful. The gamma-rays lasted between two and six minutes. This could pave way to solving the mystery of FRBs.

James DeLaunay, a Penn State researcher and first author of the paper, told Mail Online: "Before this discovery FRBs were not seen to show emission in any other part of the [electromagnetic] spectrum besides radio, so this is the first ever detection of a non-radio counterpart to an FRB. "

Where did the recent FRB come from?
The scientists cannot pinpoint where the FRB came from. it may be from a a star system called VHS7 or a previously undiscovered galaxy. Which ever it is, they are certain that the FRB came from at least 1.5 billion light-years from Earth.

The observations was published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.