For eight years, the radio telescope in New South Wales famous for beaming images of astronauts from the moon, has been detecting weird, possibly alien signals from deep space.

These millisecond bursts of radio energy, erupting with as much power as the sun emits in a day, seemed to be ripping across 5.5 billion light-years worth of stars and planets to reach out to us from a distant place with a strange, indecipherable pattern — a blimp pregnant with unknown meaning, hinting at a universe in which we are not alone.

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Scientists and telescopes across the globe rushed to identify the radio bursts, which were reported extensively in the Royal Astronomical Society journal.

The key, it seemed, was the mysterious number 187.5. The range of the signal’s highs and lows could all be multiplied by this number.

But for nearly a decade, it seems the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales has been listening to someone reheat their lunch.

Intrepid astronomer Emily Petroff, along with a team of CSIRO scientists, discovered a microwave oven had been running interference.

It seems Pete the planetary scientist (not his or her real name) had been pulling open the microwave door before its cycle had finished, unleashing the power of a month’s worth of suns upon his unsuspecting colleagues.

For God’s sake, Pete.

Interestingly, this has not ruled out of the possibility of alien contact, as another kind of radio signal, known as ‘fast radio bursts’, remains unidentified.

“Fast radio bursts are still believed to come from the distant universe, but we now know that perytons [from the microwave oven] are closer to home and we don’t have to worry about getting them confused anymore,” Dr Petroff told The New Daily.

“We have definitely attributed one mystery signal to our kitchen microwaves but the source of the other (FRBs) is still unknown.”

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the possibility the radio signals were extraterrestrial had been ruled out. It has not.