We've found a mysterious energy burst that's repeating and is more powerful than mill

We've found a mysterious energy burst that's repeating and is more powerful than millions of Suns

Astronomers have detected a repeating fast radio burst (FRB) – a mysterious, ultra-brief but extremely powerful burst of energy far away in space – for only the second time in history.

FRBs were first discovered a decade ago, uber-energetic pulses of radio waves travelling through the Universe. They are brief, lasting just a few milliseconds, but carry more power than 500 million Suns. Researchers still don't know what generates these bursts – some have even dubiously speculated that they could be aliens communicating with us.

We have found dozens of such signals to date, but until now only one repeating signal was detected by the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico in 2012. It’s thought that this first repeater's origin may be a young, rapidly rotating and highly magnetised neutron star – extremely dense stellar objects thought to be the cores collapsed stars. But there are many different theories about the source of FRBs, including cosmic strings and evaporating black holes.