Peryton (astronomy)
short radio signals of terrestrial origin
In radio astronomy, perytons are short man-made radio signals of a few milliseconds resembling fast radio bursts (FRB). A peryton differs from radio frequency interference by the fact that it is a pulse of several to tens of millisecond duration which sweeps down in frequency. They are further verified by the fact that they occur at the same time in many beams, indicating that they come from Earth, whereas FRBs occur in only one or two of the beams, indicating that they are of galactic origin. The first signal occurred in 2001 but was not discovered until 2007. First detected at the Parkes Observatory, data gathered by the telescope also suggested the source was local. The signals were found to be caused by the premature opening of a microwave oven door nearby.
Naming
Due to the unclear origin of the detections at first, the radio signals were named after the peryton, a fictional winged stag that casts the shadow of a man. This interprets into "strangeness made by man". This name was chosen for these signals because they are man-made but have characteristics that mimic the natural phenomenon of FRBs. The name was coined by Sarah Burke-Spolaor et al.
“Peryton (astronomy)” enters the record as short radio signals of terrestrial origin. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Peryton, astronomy and short can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15840002. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2001 and 2007.
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This entry incorporates text from “Peryton (astronomy)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.