The universe is awash with strange radio signals, but astronomers have now detected a really bizarre one that repeats every hour, cycling through three different states. While they have some ideas about its origin it can’t be explained by our current understanding of physics.
That signal might be insignificant to us; but it may be their way of establishing a timescale.
The time may be derived from how long their planet takes to rotate…aka the length of one sub-unit of their day.
Or, it could be the periodicity of the lifecycle of a cool bug they like, or it could be just a random period from any huge number of celestial objects we have yet to categorize. I have a guess for which of these options it is, personally.