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Since their discovery ten years ago, fast radio bursts have confounded astronomers. These intergalactic pulses of radio energy have defied explanation, but a new theory suggests a technological origin, whereby aliens use these beams to propel their ships through space. Extremely speculative stuff, to be sure, but it's an idea worth pursuing given just how weird these pulses are.
The idea that Fast Radio Bursts are produced by advanced alien civilizations in order to drive spacecraft through interstellar space sounds like something a UFO conspiracy site might cook up—but it's actually the serious suggestion of a new paper published by Avi Loeb and Manasvi Lingam from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Of course, much more evidence is needed before we can attribute this unexplained phenomenon to artificial sources versus a natural astrophysical process.
With no good theory to go by, Loeb and Lingam wondered if extraterrestrials might be involved—and not without good reason. In a word, FRBs are weird. Like really weird.
http://gizmodo.com/wild-new-theory-suggests-radio-bursts-beyond-our-galaxy-1793130515
Additional coverage at ScienceBlog.com and Phys.org
Source: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Journal Abstract: Fast Radio Bursts from Extragalactic Light Sails
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11 2017, @09:52AM (3 children)
Whatever deviates from your experience of the macroscopic world is weird, and of course one should raise the antennas when that happens.
But it is stupid to model things outside the macroscopic scale. Quantum effects are weird? nope, apparently entangled particles react to observation, it is just like late binding in programming. One choice among many. No matter if the universe has or hasn't further meta dimensions (if it is designed or not, basically), all its rules are ultimately arbitrary. Our principles derive from, do not affect, the rules. That means that the weirdness of fast radio bursts is not enough to call them artificial. Especially when existing models are wrong in accounting for detected matter and energy, and call the axis of evil statistical anomaly in the background radiation a coincidence.
Anyway given radio bursts, if the content were quite similar from burst to burst it might be a trace by propellers, but I would first consider them communication. We do just that at smaller scale.
And before some clever guy says communication by radio at interstellar distances is too slow, I ask: a million years is too slow for whom? Meatbags, sure. Aliens? who knows. Self repairing bots? HA, no problem, just remove systemd.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday March 11 2017, @12:39PM (2 children)
Quite the opposite. We cannot do anything useful with them if we don't have a model.
See? A model. You just did it yourself.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11 2017, @03:29PM
If I have an apple and an orange and give you the orange, it isnt suprising that someone can know I have the apple when they see you eating the orange later.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12 2017, @01:03PM
You are using a general definition of model, as GP I meant a model that makes sense for the macroscopic experience. Late binding = quantum is not a model in the second sense.