Talk about a long-distance call! Astronomers have stumbled across a mysterious radio signal that appears to have traveled from not just from outside of our solar system – but beyond even our Milky Way galaxy.
The largest cosmic ear in the world, the 305-metre-wide Arecibo radio dish in Puerto Rico, picked up a momentary burst of radio waves on Nov. 2, 2012. The signal itself was quite modest – nothing more than radio blip lasting only three one-thousandths of a second long. It was so fast that the human ear alone could not detect it, but its ramifications could be huge in the research community.
The same signal had been heard a few times before, but only by the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia. Astronomers, however, questioned its origin, thinking that since only that one observatory was hearing it, it must be coming from close to our planet, most likely somewhere within Earth’s environment. They thought it could have been an errant communication signal bouncing off the upper atmosphere or a satellite.
via Yahoo News
Image: The bright sun greets the International Space Station in this Nov. 22
scene from the Russian section of the orbital outpost, photographed by one
of the STS-129 crew members. Image credit: NASA.
