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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) by dry on Sunday March 12 2017, @06:02AM
Moving a planet is simple, a bunch of close flybys by a large asteroid or something bigger. Something we should be considering as the Earth has only about a billion years until the Sun increases in luminosity enough to boil the oceans.
Even weirder is disassembling planets, perhaps to build a Dyson sphere. To tear apart a planet, you just need a Dyson Planetary Spin Motor and spin up the planet. Once its rotation is about an hour, it'll fly apart. Takes lots of energy, especially if you want to do it quick (less then 40,000 years) https://spacearchaeology.org/?p=105 [spacearchaeology.org] or http://thelongearth.wikia.com/wiki/Freeman_Dyson_Planetary_Spin_Motor [wikia.com]