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The peryton is a mythological hybrid animal combining the physical features of a stag and a bird. The peryton was first named by Jorge Luis Borges in his 1957 Book of Imaginary Beings, using the fictional device of a supposedly long-lost medieval manuscript.
The peryton is said to have the head, neck, forelegs and antlers of a stag, combined with the plumage, wings and hindquarters of a large bird, although some interpretations portray the peryton as a deer in all but coloration and bird's wings.
According to Borges, perytons lived in Atlantis until an earthquake destroyed the civilization and the creatures escaped by flight. A peryton casts the shadow of a man until it kills one during its lifetime, at which time it starts to cast its own shadow. A sibyl once prophesied that the perytons would lead to the downfall of Rome. [1]
Some historical versions of the heraldry of King Charles VI of France featured winged stags as heraldic supports, [2] as did some versions of the late medieval battle standard of the Dukes of Bourbon; [3] Borges is thus clearly not the inventor of the concept, though the name 'Peryton' may be his addition.
Perytons are found or used in modern literature and games.
The term peryton is also used for radio signals of terrestrial origin that mimic fast radio bursts, pulses that appear to be coming from outside of our galaxy. [8] These perytons were found to be the result of premature opening of a microwave oven door, which releases a frequency-swept radio pulse, which mimics a fast radio burst, as the magnetron turns off. [9]
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In radio astronomy, perytons are short man-made radio signals of a few milliseconds resembling fast radio bursts (FRB). A peryton differs from radio frequency interference by the fact that it is a pulse of several to tens of millisecond duration which sweeps down in frequency. They are further verified by the fact that they occur at the same time in many beams, indicating that they come from Earth, whereas FRB's occur in only 1 or 2 of the beams, indicating that they are of galactic origin. The first signal occurred in 2001 but was not discovered until 2007. First detected at the Parkes Observatory, data gathered by the telescope also suggested the source was local. The signals were found to be caused by premature opening of a microwave oven door nearby.