Astronomers detected an "intriguing signal" from the direction of Proxima Centauri, the nearest star system to the sun, The Science Alert website reported.
The signal is reportedly a narrow beam of 980 MHz radio waves detected in April and May 2019 at the Parkes telescope in Australia.
The Parkes telescope is part of the $100 million Breakthrough Listen project to hunt for radio signals from technological sources beyond the solar system.
The 980 MHz signal appeared once and was never detected again. That frequency is important because, as Scientific American points out, that band of radio waves is typically lacking signals from human-made craft and satellites.
The researchers are still preparing a paper on the discovery, and the data has not been made public, the site said, citing The Guardian.