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posted by martyb on Saturday September 02 2017, @04:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the Bzzt-Bzzt dept.

http://news.berkeley.edu/2017/08/30/distant-galaxy-sends-out-15-high-energy-radio-bursts/

Breakthrough Listen, an initiative to find signs of intelligent life in the universe, has detected 15 brief but powerful radio pulses emanating from a mysterious and repeating source – FRB 121102 – far across the universe.

Fast radio bursts are brief, bright pulses of radio emission from distant but largely unknown sources, and FRB 121102 is the only one known to repeat: more than 150 high-energy bursts have been observed coming from the object, which was identified last year as a dwarf galaxy about 3 billion light years from Earth.

Also at: Universe Today, phys.org, and Newsweek,.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday September 02 2017, @09:32PM (1 child)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday September 02 2017, @09:32PM (#563026) Homepage

    Well, when this came out it prompted me to look up a great Star Trek: TNG episode "Who Watches the Watchers" [wikia.com] in which a Federation outpost studying a Bronze-age society of proto-Vulcans has its holographic cover blown and the crew of the enterprise has to go into full damage-control mode.

    It's a cool episode because the problem is not solved by force or technology. In fact, Captain Picard dares a motherfucker to shoot him with an arrow and gets hit to prove he's not God.

    That's one thing the prime directive never addressed - a situation in which civilizations were trying to reach out and respond to long-range radio bursts rather than just flying over and beaming down to the place.

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  • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday September 03 2017, @09:41AM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday September 03 2017, @09:41AM (#563101) Homepage

    Meta-comment: Ray Wise was in that episode and also central to that episode was Dr. Palmer.