Baffled scientists discover mysterious radio signals underneath Antarctica

Scientists have discovered strange radio signals coming from beneath the Antarctic ice sheet.

The signals were detected by the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA), a network of instruments designed to capture elusive subatomic particles known as neutrinos.

Instead of neutrinos, however, researchers were surprised to pick up unusual radio waves emerging from below the continent’s surface.

In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, the team admitted they could not determine the origin of these signals, nor explain them using known laws of physics.

Dr. Stephanie Wissel, an astrophysicist from The Pennsylvania State University who worked on the ANITA project, said: "The radio waves that we detected were at really steep angles, like 30 degrees below the surface of the ice. It's an interesting problem because we still don't actually have an explanation for what those anomalies are."

The ANITA experiment aims to detect the incredibly elusive neutrinos—among the smallest of subatomic particles.

Dr. Wissel added: "You have a billion neutrinos passing through your thumbnail at any moment, but neutrinos don't really interact. So, this is the double-edged sword problem. If we detect them, it means they have traveled all this way without interacting with anything else. We could be detecting a neutrino coming from the edge of the observable universe."

(QG - Source: Daily Mail - Picture : © Unsplash)