A scientific paper was recently published on Cornell University’s arXiv describing a radio burst that lasted for a mere 30 nanoseconds. Maybe that doesn’t sound too exciting, except that the signal was thought to come from another galaxy. But then it turned out it was just from a satellite. But then it turned out that the satellite had been dead for decades and couldn’t actually produce a transmission like that. So now it’s a story about a zombie satellite sending impossible messages from beyond the grave, in space. Interested yet?

In June 2024, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope detected what was thought to be a fast radio burst (FRB). Makes sense, as that was exactly what the telescope was trying to find. From reporting by Space.com, FRBs remain something of a mystery even 20 years after their discovery, which of course just make scientists want to study them more. So detecting one was pretty great… until the team examining the find realized that the FRB made no sense at all.

For one thing, the signal was too short — FRBs typically last micro- or milliseconds, not mere nanoseconds. Yes, those time frames are all incredibly small, but they are orders of magnitude apart. The radio telescope’s image of it was also very fuzzy, which, like with a normal camera, indicated that the source was actually very, very close, not in a distant galaxy, where other FRB signals were from. What on Earth (or off it) was going on? Well, the answer turned out to be very boring, right before it got incredibly weird.