Mysterious split-second burst of radio waves 'discovered' from outer space

A split-second burst of radio waves has been discovered by scientists using the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico that provides important new evidence of mysterious pulses that appear to come from deep in outer space.

The finding by an international team of astronomers marks the first time that a so-called "fast radio burst" has been detected using an instrument other than the Parkes radio telescope in Australia.

Victoria Kaspi, an astrophysics professor at McGill University in Montreal said that their result was important because it eliminated any doubt that these radio bursts were truly of cosmic origin and the radio waves showed every sign of having come from far outside their galaxy which was a really exciting prospect.

Jason Hessels, co-author and astronomer at ASTRON and the University of Amsterdam asserted that the race was now on to figure out what caused these bursts.

The international team of scientists, who reported the Arecibo finding confirm previous estimated that these strange cosmic bursts occurred roughly 10,000 times a day over the whole sky.

The bursts appeared to be coming from beyond the Milky Way galaxy based on measurement of an effect known as plasma dispersion.

The study is published in the Astrophysical Journal.