Eight mysterious radio signals from deep space have been detected by scientists, thanks to a new artificial intelligence algorithm. This “exciting” discovery is considered important as – as the researchers hope – it will improve the search for extraterrestrial life and was published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

The experts – led by University of Toronto student Peter Ma, who developed the sophisticated algorithm – detected the radio signals by examining 820 stars in a region of space previously thought to be devoid of any possible extraterrestrial activity.

In fact, according to the DailyMail, these signals had escaped previous examinations of the data due to interference.

“We need to distinguish the exciting radio signals in space from the indifferent radio signals coming from Earth,” said Ma.

The research involved astronomers from the SETI Institute, Breakthrough Listen and scientific research institutions around the world.

In the chart released by SETI, the detected radio signals are the ones in orange.

The signals met all the scientific criteria to be labeled “extraterrestrial”.

First, it was narrow band – which points to an extraterrestrial source, because signals caused by natural phenomena tend to be broadband.

They also had what’s known as “tilt”, meaning that the origin of the signals had some relative acceleration to our antennas, so it couldn’t have come from Earth.

And finally, they appeared in observations with an ON source rather than an OFF source, whereas human radio interference usually appears in both ON and OFF observations due to the nearby source.