Hourly radio signal from space has scientists stumped: ‘We can’t quite explain what’s going on here’

There’s no *69 option for this long-distance call.

A newly discovered, yet still mysterious radio signal from the far reaches of space that repeats itself hourly is perplexing scientists.

The discovery team bluntly stated, it “isn’t like anything astronomers have seen before,” according to researchers Manisha Caleb and Emil Lenc.

“We can’t quite explain what’s going on here.”

This signal’s total time of transmission has been clocked in at a 53.8-minute period. That “is by far the longest” ever recorded.

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It comes from an estimated 4.85 kiloparsecs away, according to their data, recently published in Nature Astronomy .

Considering that a regular parsec equates to 191,73,501,441,011 miles, the source is quite far from Earth.

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The frequent speed of light bursts unusually presents itself in a “blinking” pattern in a series of different pulses over the near hour. They range from 370 milliseconds to up to 50 seconds in real time — some are long and bright while others are fast and weak.

Sadly for fans of the hit novel turned Netflix show “The 3 Body Problem,” in which the universe “winks” at a breakthrough scientist through a nocturnal signal, this scenario is more down to Earth.

“It’s most likely a very unusual neutron star,” Caleb and Lenc added — and they “can’t rule out other possibilities.”

“Similar patterns have been seen in neutron stars, but our current understanding of neutron stars suggests they should not be able to have such a long period.”

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The signal was first found by the telescope ASKAP J1935+2148 — the numbers reflect the position in space it points towards — as it searched for gamma rays and searched for pulses from a fast radio burst.

“We don’t know how long ASKAP J1935+2148 has been emitting radio signals, as radio astronomy surveys don’t usually search for objects with periods this long.”

If not a neutron star, signs point to a white dwarf star — “the Earth-sized cinder of a burnt-out star that has exhausted its fuel” — as the second most likely source.

It could also be part of a system where either a neutron or white draw star is orbiting another star that cannot be seen.

“This object might prompt us to reconsider our decades-old understanding of neutron stars or white dwarfs, particularly in how they emit radio waves and what their populations are like within our galaxy.”

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