Something has been sending 20-minute radio blasts to Earth for the last 35 years

19 July 2023 , 18:34

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Unexplained waves lasting for 21 minutes each have been hitting Earth for the past 35 years, scientists say (Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Are aliens trying to contact humans on Earth? An ongoing string of radio signals directed at our planet suggest this may not be as absurd as it seems.

For at least 35 years now, scientists say a series of unexplained signals from space have been projected towards our planet continuously. Yet researchers say they have no idea what - or who - is causing or sending the radio waves.

Any possible reasons they can think of have been excluded based on the form of the waves, which have been hitting earth since at least 1988, initially going unspotted before scientists later looked back at radio archive data.

The continuous blasts are varied in strength and brightness and scientists say they take a similar form to waves emitted from a pulsar, which can last between miliseconds and several seconds.

But pulsating for 21 minute blasts each, these waves differ to anything seen on Earth. One possible explanation scientists have pondered is pulsars - neutron stars in rotation and emitting signals as they do so, a bit like the beam of a lighthouse.

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When these signals cross the earth's surface, these emissions would be bright and brief - but scientists say the spinning star's magnetic field would need to be extremely strong for this to work. So strong in fact, it breaks any known record.

The theory has since prompted astrophysicists to theorise that the source - which they've called GPMJ1839-10 - must be spinning incredibly fast if the waves are strong enough to be picked up on earth.

Possible culprits could be a white dwarf - a star at the end of its life - or a magnetar, which is a form of star with an incredibly intense magnetic field. Yet these types of star do not send out waves like those picked up for the 35 years, bringing scientists back to square one.

The huge mystery leaves some to ponder whether other life forms could be sending the signals, although this theory has yet to be proven.

But efforts are underway to continue hunting the bizarre signals, physics professor Victoria M Kaspi has said. The academic based at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, said in a recent article: “Only time will tell what else lurks in these data, and what observations across many astronomical timescales will reveal.”

Susie Beever