Mysterious radio waves from space follows mathematical pattern

Researchers recently found that radio bursts from space reveal strange mathematical pattern.

According to study co-authors Michael Hippke of the Institute of Data Analysis in Neukirchen-Vluyn, Germany, and John Learned of the University of Hawaii in Manoa, the bursts, which were first detected in 2001, all had dispersion measures that were integer multiples of the same number: 187.5, Fox News reported.

Nobody knows what causes fast radio bursts, known as FRBs. They only last a few milliseconds, and only one so far has been captured live (by the Parkes Telescope in Australia last year).

Though the bursts release just as much energy in a few milliseconds as the sun does in a month, their brevity indicates that the source must be small, with estimates being several hundred miles across at most.

Researchers use dispersion measures, which records how much "space gunk" the burst has passed through, to estimate the distance an FRB has travelled. For instance, a low frequency FRB would have more gunk on it, indicating a longer trip, whereas a high frequency FRB would be cleaner, indicating it came from closer to Earth.

The fact that all of the FRBs' dispersion measures are integer multiples of 187.5 has, according to Hippke and Learned's team's calculations, a 5 in 10,000 chance of being coincidental. The dispersion measures also indicate that their origin is relatively close to Earth, but unlikely from within our own galaxy.

There are numerous theories on where these bursts came from, including speculation that the messages are from extraterrestrial intelligence. To the scientific community, however, this theory doesn't really hold water, and was seen as more of a last resort only after all other avenues have been exhausted.