Mysterious Radio Pulses

The signal was like nothing Abel Mendez had ever seen. It had the same frequency as radio emissions from satellites, but it pulsed like it came from something much more distant. It appeared only when Mendez and his colleagues had their telescope pointed at a single star - an unassuming red dwarf called Ross 128 just 11 light-years away.

Astronomers have tied the origin of Fast Radio Bursts - brief yet brilliant eruptions of cosmic radio waves - to a highly magnetised, gas-filled region of space, providing a new hint in the decade-long quest to explain the mysterious radio pulses.

The signal was like nothing Abel Mendez had ever seen. It had the same frequency as radio emissions from satellites, but it pulsed like it came from something much more distant. It appeared only when Mendez and his colleagues had their telescope pointed at a single star - an unassuming red dwarf called Ross 128 just 11 light-years away.

Astronomers have tied the origin of Fast Radio Bursts - brief yet brilliant eruptions of cosmic radio waves - to a highly magnetised, gas-filled region of space, providing a new hint in the decade-long quest to explain the mysterious radio pulses.