Astronomers have not been able to solve the mystery of origin of strange, fast radio bursts that have been detected from space since 2007. These highly energetic radio pulses appear to be coming from a distance of several billion light years.

According to New Scientist, radio telescopes have detected Fast Radio Bursts, which are incredibly short, high-energy pulses. They last for a few milliseconds and erupt with the energy the sun releases in a day.

The signals show a repeating pattern of numbers which doesn’t match with the information scientists know about cosmic physics.

Researcher Michael Hippke at the Institute for Data Analysis in Germany along with colleagues studied 11 radio bursts recently. They discovered that these unexplained radio waves share a mathematical pattern.

According to scientists, dispersion is the key to determine the distance radio waves have traveled. ‘Dispersion measure’ tells how much dust, gas, and other material the waves have passed through on their way to Earth.

Those waves that have passed through a lot of material originated at greater distances than those that passed through very little.

Radio bursts occur at a wide range of frequencies. Low-frequency waves are long and often slow down when they interact with matter, such as electron clouds. High-frequency waves are short and travel long distances relatively easily.

The high frequency waves arrive ahead of the lower frequency ones during radio burst occurrence. The time delay between arrival of these waves is known as the dispersion measure.

Hippke and his team found that these dispersion measures are all integer multiples of the number 187.5 when they plotted the dispersion measures of the unusual radio bursts. The chances of this pattern being coincidence are estimated to be five in 10,000.

Although the cause of the radio bursts is unknown, some have suggested they could be communications by alien civilizations. Other theories for the bursts’ origins include evaporating black holes or strange behaviors by pulsars.