The SETI folks are excited...

The SETI folks are excited...  Radio astronomers are observing fast radio bursts with discrete steps in their dispersion function that are hard to explain by natural mechanisms.  In other words, they look like something produced by an intelligent being.  There's some definite suspicion that the signals are man-made, though: the discrete steps are awfully close to round numbers of seconds.  Since seconds are an entirely arbitrary measure of time used by humans on Earth, it seems unlikely that an alien source would come up with the same thing...