Mysterious radio pulses found in Antarctica seem to defy physics, and researchers are trying to trace their origins

“They are expected to arrive from slightly below the horizon, where there is not much Earth for them to be absorbed,” Justin Vandenbroucke, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who was not involved in the research but peer-reviewed it, tells CNN’s Ashley Strickland. Models predict these pulses would come in at angles of only one to five degrees below the horizon—these came through the ice at a much sharper 30 degrees, leaving researchers unable to identify their origins.