Swarm of mysterious radio bursts seen coming from deep space

[Zorro]

Astronomers have detected 13 high-speed bursts of radio waves coming from deep space—including one that regularly repeats. While the exact sources remain unknown, the new bevy of mysterious blasts does offer fresh clues to where and why such flashes appear across the cosmos.

Fast radio bursts, as they are known to scientists, are among the universe's most bizarre phenomena. Each burst lasts just thousandths of a second, and they all appear to be coming from far outside our home galaxy, the Milky Way.

Electromagnetism is one of the four fundamental forces of nature. Learn about the relationship between electricity and magnetism, the different wavelengths on the electromagnetic spectrum, and how an invisible force protects our entire planet.
Since these bursts were discovered in 2007, their cause has remained a puzzle. Based on estimations of the known range of their frequencies and an understanding of activity in the universe, scientists expect that nearly a thousand of them happen every day. But to date, only a handful have been found.

Now, a team using the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, or CHIME, has announced the additional 13 new detections, including an especially rare repeating burst. Until now, only one other repeating fast radio burst was known to exist.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/01/swarm-of-mysterious-radio-bursts-seen-coming-from-deep-space/

[DemoTex]

1. CQ CQ CQ

QRZ QRZ QRZ

73

[johnp3907]

3. 2X2L calling CQ . . . 2X2L calling CQ . . . 2X2L calling CQ . . .

Isn't there anyone . . . 2X2L --

[Roland99]

4. +1

[Zorro]

7. QRZ VGER

[janx]

12. ..._.

_ _._

[ismnotwasm]

2. Cool

I love this stuff

[ProudLib72]

5. I'm not saying it's aliens

But it's aliens.

[Sugar Smack]

11. Help is on the way!

I wonder what's been the holdup?

[ProudLib72]

18. The threat of Space Force!

But if he can't get $5.7 billion for the wall, he isn't going to get 15 bazillion samolians for Space Force.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

43. we must have Dyson sphere

Aliens are trying to microwave the planet! They might not be white! National emergency needed to begin a beautiful concrete or maybe steel or whatever Dyson sphere! Maybe slats. Mars will pay for it!

[cynatnite]

6. Gotta be the Death Star and the Rebel Tie Fighters going at it...

Seriously, this is great...

until the invasion fleet arrives and we're all taken over by intelligent organisms and force to do their will.

I love sci-fi. What can I say?

[yortsed snacilbuper]

8. Maybe their looking for their lost space craft?

[cynatnite]

13. ****

[cwydro]

14. That's hilarious!

[crazytown]

25. !

[Liberal In Texas]

28. Good one, just passed it on lol. n/t

[colsohlibgal]

9. Sure Cannot Rule Out ETs

It just doesn’t make sense that we are the only intelligent life in this vast Cosmos. There are likely countless others.

[Blue_true]

20. We almost surely have been visited by much more intelligent beings.

I have thought about what should happen once people from this planet can travel to another star and a planet that has life.

Should it be colonized? My feeling is that we should just observe silently and leave the beings there alone. My sense is that aliens have made that decision about us after finding us.

[trev]

35. I agree that the aliens came here but

I believe they interfered.

[Blue_true]

37. How do you think they did? Not argumentative, you just made an interesting point. nt

[trev]

40. I follow Zecharia Sitchin.

His argument that aliens fiddled with our DNA some 40,000 years ago was very convincing to me.

[Blue_true]

41. Possible.

Any being that can reach us would be much smarter than we are.

[trev]

42. I agree with that statement. :)

[Suburban Warrior]

10. Klaatu barada nikto

[janx]

15. Radio Astronomy--one example:

http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/



https://science.nrao.edu/

[Blue_true]

21. Could also be from a unique universe celestial body.

That does not have emission blocking mass around it.

[druidity33]

16. Ultima Thule, obviously... nt.

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

17. "Send more Chuck Berry"

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

19. Okay, I just called My Son, the Astronomer (really, that's his name!)

and he said there's simply a lot more to learn about these radio waves, but they will probably turn out not to be the product of an ancient and long-gone civilization.

He also said that when we do finally find extra-terrestrial life it most likely will be stromatolites. Sigh.

[Blue_true]

23. Isn't there a analysis that stronatolites made aerobic life possible on earth,

including us?

The scary thing is that it is estimated that those blue-green algae put the majority of the oxygen in existence into the atmosphere, but they have greatly declined in number since their heyday. The more I find out, the more I come to feel that earth is one big Petri dish, with nothing going out or coming in, but lots of changes happening in the medium within the dish.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

24. I think so.

Apparently one theory of the evolution of life has the very first steps occurring somewhat readily, but not often going beyond that. It seems to me that once life in any form takes root, the next essential ingredient is time.

That same son recently told my that current thinking is that the Universe is actually still new enough that we may very well be one of the very first ever intelligent/technological species to evolve, and that's one important reason we haven't found evidence of other intelligent/technological species out there.

Of course, even simple interstellar distances are simply vaster than most people understand. Which means that travel between stars will most likely never happen. Even if it does, and keep in mind that faster than light drives probably will never ever exist, there will be real limits on how far we can possibly go. And that's without considering other issues like the problem of killing radiation out in space.

Travel between galaxies is probably completely out of the question.

[Blue_true]

29. Mr. Son's reasoning seems sound to me, but I am really not well versed in this area.

I agree with your observation on distance, not sure that I fully agree that humans won't one day reach another star.

The nearest star to us that may support life is around 1 Parsec away from us, around 19 trillion miles. The distance is enormous given that in all of our history to date, we have managed to just get a spacecraft past the Sun's heliosphere at around 10-12 billion miles. So the task of even getting a robotic craft to 19 trillion miles is enormous still, add onto that sending humans and supporting their life over such a distance, as well as getting them back safely. Totally mind boggling to think about.

Where I somewhat disagree with you is on the possibility of one day getting at least a robotic craft to another nearby star. Someone here on DU pointed out last year that if a spacecraft simply continuously accelerated at the Earth's gravitational acceleration, it would reach the speed of light in a little less than 1 year, IF IT FOUND THE ENERGY TO SUPPORT THE CONTINUOUS ACCELERATION, added the caps to highlight what I am sure you know is the big problem, finding the energy to sustain acceleration. This is where I go a little weird, I truly believe that there is another undiscovered force of nature, and when it is discovered and understood will make ultra deep space travel possible, even travel toward the galaxy core. Maybe it is my inexperience in this area, but when I see Astrophysicists explain celestial body orbits, I get the feeling something is missing. If you look at our own star, planets progressively revolve slower around the Sun the farther they are from it. The explanation for planetary orbits is primordial momentum being maintained in a vacuum, but the same people mention how collisions have changed the spins of Venus and Uranus, yet somehow did not change their revolution speed order - when I think about what I learned as an engineering student, I find it difficult to grasp how one vector of momentum can be completely reversed without a second vector being altered significantly - that has led me to believe in the unknown force concept that some people are pushing. Once we learn how to modulate gravity and the unknown force is a spacecraft, we should be able to accelerate a space craft up to the speed that our galaxy core revolves in the univers - being able to reach that speed would allow spacecraft to reach the nearest star in weeks or a few months, and allow them to avoid colliding with object in space. Just my take, admittedly an uninformed one.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

31. Good post.

As you've pointed out, the energy needed to attain 99% c is enormous. My son has explained some of the things people who consider that problem are thinking about, but I can never quite remember any of them.

FTL travel is considered at this time to be simply impossible by most physicists, although they retain an open mind about the possibility of wormholes. Our galaxy core is not moving faster than the speed of light, so achieving that speed wouldn't be all that great.

My son often refers to the speed of various things we've sent out as a percentage of c, and I don't recall what numbers he's quoted, but they're shockingly low. To think of it another way, the speed of light is shockingly fast, and even at that rate of travel our Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light years across.

The speed at which a planet rotates around its sun is going to be fixed by its distance from that sun. The impacts that altered other planets -- and remember, there was an impact of Earth very early on by a Mars-sized planet which is how we got our moon -- I'm pretty sure simply isn't sufficient to knock said planet out of its orbit.

In a slightly related matter, a couple of days ago I asked him if the sudden disappearance of Jupiter, by some incredibly advanced alien race which could somehow vaporize the gas giant, if that disappearance would have any effect on the other planets. Short answer is no. He does often include longer answers, which in this case is that any effect on other planets would be so minimal that it would be a couple of billions of years before the loss of Jupiter mattered. The loss would have a minor impact on the orbits of comets and asteroids, but way back in the beginning Jupiter and the other gas giants did an excellent job of sweeping up debris left over from the original formation of the solar system, greatly reducing the excess material that could rain down on the other planets.

I have the best conversations with my son.

[Blue_true]

32. The gravity core revolves at only a minute fraction of the speed of light.

I think somewhere around 1/654. And it is the fastest revolving thing in our galaxy, If I understand correctly. But getting a spacecraft up to that speed would allow it to travel ~ 24 million miles per day, I believe that if we can control forces of nature, then we could in theory warp that speed by several multiples (the old Star Trek imagery, although it implies warping of the speed of light, which not even I would think is possible ). If we can warp the speed that the Galaxy core moves it, then sending robotic spacecraft 5-20 Parsecs from us over a number of decades should be possible, still a short distance, true, given that the thickness of the Orion Arm where our star sits is around 250 Parsecs per side, 500 Parsecs total, and we sit not remotely close to the galaxy core.

I was thinking last night. If I could go to a planet that was in the bright part of the galaxy, I would not want to go because there would never be a true night. Imagine the beings, if any exist, that live in that region of the galaxy, imagine what they must look like.

[yortsed snacilbuper]

38. You could put people in suspended animation and send them to the inner core of the galaxy,

and wake them up when they arrive!

[Blue_true]

39. Actually, to travel that far, sonething would have to be done.

The distances are enormous, as the poster that I responded to pointed out early on. If it was possible to achieve them, the speeds would have to be enormous. As the poster pointed out, the Milky Way is around 100,000 light years across (estimated because no one know for sure, the assumption is that the galaxy on the other side is shaped roughly like our side of Sagitarrius A (the core), uniform circumference of the hydrogen and dust ring that surrounds the galaxy). We sit around 27,000 light years from the galaxy core (any trip would have to stop well short of the core due to the forces believed to increase enormously as the core is approached) - so, even if a spacecraft could travel at the speed of light, it would take around 27,000 years to reach the core (ignoring the forces there).

But to your point about suspending crew members in some state. The acceleration to make such a trip would be so enormous that they literally would have to be frozen solid with additional fluid in their bodies prevent organ movement, and even with that, the compression force from the acceleration would likely still collapse their insides. My guess is that at some point humans will figure out how to get to a near star system, but as was pointed out be someone else, humans won't go much farther than that. Even robotic craft trying to reach the galaxy core in a short time (say 200-500 years) would likely encounter problems with electronic signal transmissions given that such a time duration would require a top speed that is around 54 times the speed of light (that may be possible in movies and in a mind like mine, but in the real world, not so much)

[DFW]

22. Exclusive! I got the first translation of the original message

It said, „Very sorry, but there is no way in the world, yours or ours, that we will take him back. Trump is yours now. Your planet will self-destruct in five months. Good luck, Earth!“

[Crutchez_CuiBono]

26. "We are here. We are here. We are here."

Horton Hears a Who.

[Leith]

33. We are here

- Torchwood: Children of the Earth


This was a 5-part episode that started with messages from space starting with just the word "we." Then it was "we are," followed by "we are coming." The last message was "We are here."

Honestly, though, the radio bursts are probably from a neutron star spinning impossibly fast and shooting the radio waves from the poles. Astronomers know about this type of phenomenon.

[Crutchez_CuiBono]

36. Pretty cool.

May have to check in on that 5 parter. Great story line.

[Botany]

27. old news

[Blue_true]

30. That guy named James is such a good actor.

Too bad that he is a rightwing prick.

Never saw the movie, will need to catch up on it.

[kairos12]

34. Maybe there saying a wall won't help you if we show up.