7 Times We Really Thought We'd Found Aliens

6. The Mysterious FRBs

Short of them actually dropping out of the sky, the best way for us to detect aliens from our Earthly vantage point, is to try to pick up their radio signals. Unfortunately, a lot of other things in the universe also emit radio signals, so sorting the exciting ones from the mundane is a large and complicated undertaking.

Researchers at Cornell University say they have discovered a series of repeated 10 millisecond-long “fast radio bursts” (FRBs) after taking a look through archive data from the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico. These are incredibly energetic bursts originating from impossibly far away and there are very few things in the universe capable of producing them. These are supermassive black holes, colliding neutron stars, and intelligent alien civilisations.

These repeated pulses often originate from the same point in space, so it stands to reason that the event that causes them isn't destructive, or there would be nothing there to emit the following signals.