Astronomers searching the skies for pulsars instead found a mysterious burst of radio activity, nothing like anything any of them had seen before.
According to Reuters, the researchers were trawling through a back catalogue of data from the Parkes telescope in Australia when they came across the signal. It was five milliseconds long and might be the calling card of a single, highly energetic event such as a supernova, the team said.
More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/28/super_radio_burst/