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As well as brightening the sky and interfering with astronomy through their flashes and radio waves, satellites pollute the atmosphere on launch and on re-entry, as research from last October underscored.

But simulating visual imagery based on radio waves is an unusual approach for robots and autonomous vehicles.

Their strong magnetic fields can produce beams of radio waves that sweep across the sky like a lighthouse, resulting in metronomic radio pulses with intervals ranging from milliseconds to seconds.

Long-period radio transients are relatively new to science, and it has been an ongoing mystery how they generate radio waves.

Depending on its dimensions, the cylinder will ring with radio waves of a specific frequency, just as a bottle will whistle with sound waves of a set pitch if you blow across its mouth.