Some strange radio signals are broadcasting out of Antarctic ice, and the researchers who found them don't know why.

Using a cosmic particle detector, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania detected peculiar signals that, according to a press release, "defy the current understanding of particle physics."

The particle detector that found those strange signals — which is, charmingly, suspended from a bunch of balloons — belongs to a range of instruments known as the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA).

That balloon-based conglomerate generally detects particles reflected onto the ground from space, which made it all the stranger when the Penn researchers found that the signals they were reading seemed to be coming from below the horizon.

According to Stephanie Wissel, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at Penn who also worked on the ANITA team that detected those strange Antarctic pulses, the researchers had been looking for tiny, electric charge-lacking neutrino particles when they stumbled upon the bizarre waves.

"The radio waves that we detected were at really steep angles," Wissel said in the press release, "like 30 degrees below the surface of the ice."

Though the particulars of the particle findings were detailed in a new paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the researchers were more candid in the press release about just how stumped they were.