![\"\\u200bThe](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/u200bthe-team-detected-the-signal-using-the-australian-square-kilometre-array-pathfinder-telescope.j.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nAstronomers have finally solved a year-long mystery that had them baffled after discovering a mysterious signal.<\/p>\n
Australian scientists have traced a radio burst detected last year to a defunct American satellite from the 1960s orbiting just 4,500km from Earth.<\/p>\n
The discovery challenges fundamental assumptions about fast radio bursts, which scientists believed originated exclusively from distant galaxies billions of light years away.<\/p>\n
Researchers captured the signal using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder telescope in Western Australia, which lasted merely 30 nanoseconds.<\/p>\n
After 12 months of investigation, the team identified the source as Relay Two, a telecommunications satellite that ceased operations in 1967.<\/p>\n
The team detected the signal using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder telescope<\/p>\n
Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n
The burst exhibited peculiar characteristics that immediately puzzled researchers.<\/p>\n
Unlike typical fast radio bursts from deep space, this signal showed no dispersion between high and low frequencies, indicating it originated within a few hundred light years of Earth.<\/p>\n
The research team said: “We detected a burst. Surprisingly, it showed no evidence of a time delay between high and low frequencies, a phenomenon known as ‘dispersion’.”<\/p>\n
Whilst the fastest previously recorded fast radio burst lasted approximately 10 millionths of a second, this detection comprised an intensely bright pulse lasting mere billionths of a second, followed by two fainter after-pulses.<\/p>\n
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS<\/strong><\/p>\n The investigation proved challenging for the researchers, when they attempted to examine their recordings more closely, the signal had vanished.<\/p>\n Two months of troubleshooting revealed an unexpected problem with their telescope array, when their signal’s proximity caused severe blurring in their images, similar to photographing an object too close to a camera lens.<\/p>\n Only by removing some antennas from their analysis could they finally image the burst clearly.<\/p>\n This blurring effect helped them calculate the precise distance of 4,500 kilometres, pointing directly to Relay Two’s location at the time of detection.<\/p>\n Relay Two was launched by the US in 1964<\/p>\n Nasa<\/p>\n Electrostatic discharge remains the leading theory, occurring when satellites accumulate electrical charge from space plasma and suddenly release it.<\/p>\n However, the detected burst was thousands of times shorter than typical electrostatic discharges. <\/p>\n Calculations suggest a 22-microgram particle travelling at 20 kilometres per second could generate such a radio flash, though researchers estimate only a one per cent probability of this scenario.<\/p>\n Relay Two, launched by the United States in 1964, operated for just one year before failing completely by 1967.<\/p>\n Despite speculation about “zombie satellites” reawakening, no onboard system could have produced nanosecond bursts even when operational.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Astronomers have finally solved a year-long mystery that had them baffled after discovering a mysterious signal. Australian scientists…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[12,70,512,413,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-227038","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-sgg","11":"tag-space","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114773250852523612","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\\u200bRelay](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/u200brelay-two-was-launched-by-the-us-in-1964.png\")