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BURSTS of radio waves flashing across the sky seem to follow a mathematical pattern. If the pattern is real, either some strange celestial physics is going on, or the bursts are artificial, produced by human – or alien – technology.
Telescopes have been picking up so-called fast radio bursts (FRBs) since 2001. They last just a few milliseconds and erupt with about as much energy as the sun releases in a month. Ten have been detected so far, most recently in 2014, when the Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia, caught a burst in action for the first time. The others were found by sifting through data after the bursts had arrived at Earth. No one knows what causes them, but the brevity of the bursts means their source has to be small – hundreds of kilometers across at most – so they can't be from ordinary stars. And they seem to come from far outside the galaxy.
The weird part is that they all fit a pattern that doesn't match what we know about cosmic physics.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by FatPhil on Thursday April 02 2015, @09:21AM
Yes, *clearly it's aliens*, or humans, which have managed to harness something a billion times as powerful as the sun.
Was the physics of pulsars explained before or after they were discovered? Why should the physics of this be any different?
Then again, that's a shit example - pulsars were "LGM-1". This is just "LGM-2", I guess.
ALIENS!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Informative) by dublet on Thursday April 02 2015, @09:55AM
And indeed the wikipedia page on FRBs [wikipedia.org] has a few theories outlined, none of which involve little green men:
Because of the isolated nature of the observed phenomenon, the nature of the source remains speculative. As of 2015, there is no generally accepted explanation. The emission region is estimated to be no larger than a few hundred kilometers. If the bursts come from cosmological distances, their sources must be very bright.[9] One possible explanation would be a collision between very dense objects like black holes or neutron stars. Blitzars [wikipedia.org] are another proposed explanation.[9] It has been suggested that there is a connection to gamma ray bursts [wikipedia.org].[10] More recently, it has been proposed that FRBs could be originated in black hole explosions: if so, FRBs would be the first detection of Quantum Gravity [wikipedia.org] effects.[11]
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome. [dublet.org]"
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday April 02 2015, @02:44PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by francois.barbier on Thursday April 02 2015, @12:10PM
We are not even a Kardashev [wikipedia.org] Type I civilization. A Type III would do that easily.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Thursday April 02 2015, @02:31PM
Being less pessimistic, I think we might reach level 3 by harnessing all the energy of those angels as they dance on a pinhead.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2015, @12:29PM
Of course the amount of energy they release is based on the calculated distance. If they are actually satellite signals (distance of about 300km instead of 1.6 billion light years = 1.5 × 1022 km, a factor of 2 × 10-20), then according to the inverse square law, an energy of "one sun-month" (ca. 1033 J) suddenly reduces to an energy output of 2² × 1033 - 40 J, or 40 µJ. At 5 ms duration, this gives a power of about 40 µJ/5 ms = 8 mW. Not extraordinary large; rather quite small for a satellite. But then, if it's a secret spy satellite, maybe they intentionally made it weak so it isn't detected by standard receiving equipment.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03 2015, @01:32AM
Obviously, dark matter is attempting to communicate with us.