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Arecibo Radio Telescope Confirms Extra-galactic Fast Radio Pulses
schwit1 writes: "The Arecibo radio telescope has confirmed the existence of fast radio pulses. "Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are bright flashes of radio waves that last only a few thousandths of a second. Scientists using the Parkes Observatory in Australia recorded such events for the first time, but the lack of any similar findings by other facilities led to speculation that the Australian instrument might have been picking up signals originating from sources on or near Earth. The discovery at Arecibo is the first detection of a fast radio burst using an instrument other than the Parkes radio telescope. The position of the radio burst is in the direction of the constellation Auriga in the Northern sky.
"Our result is important because it eliminates any doubt that these radio bursts are truly of cosmic origin," continues Victoria Kaspi, an astrophysics professor at McGill University in Montreal and Principal Investigator for the pulsar-survey project that detected this fast radio burst. "The radio waves show every sign of having come from far outside our galaxy – a really exciting prospect." Exactly what may be causing such radio bursts represents a major new enigma for astrophysicists. Possibilities include a range of exotic astrophysical objects, such as evaporating black holes, mergers of neutron stars, or flares from magnetars — a type of neutron star with extremely powerful magnetic fields." Be warned: All of the above theories could also be wrong. These fast radio flashes could just as easily turn out to be something entirely unpredicted.
"Our result is important because it eliminates any doubt that these radio bursts are truly of cosmic origin," continues Victoria Kaspi, an astrophysics professor at McGill University in Montreal and Principal Investigator for the pulsar-survey project that detected this fast radio burst. "The radio waves show every sign of having come from far outside our galaxy – a really exciting prospect." Exactly what may be causing such radio bursts represents a major new enigma for astrophysicists. Possibilities include a range of exotic astrophysical objects, such as evaporating black holes, mergers of neutron stars, or flares from magnetars — a type of neutron star with extremely powerful magnetic fields." Be warned: All of the above theories could also be wrong. These fast radio flashes could just as easily turn out to be something entirely unpredicted.
Has anyone tried running these through some pattern recognition algorithms? This could easily be our first contact with a truly extraterrestrial intelligence.
The summary doesn't mention extra terrestrials. Is this because they don't want to jump to conclusions or is it because the nature of the pulses doesn't appear to be organic?
Aliens ...sending us messages a million years ago ... ?
... it's a giant submarine http://www.navy.mil/navydata/c...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
We've listed several things which could do it, but we really have no freakin' idea of what causes them, so this is all purely speculation.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
In Morse code: 'Come in Rangoon.'
Have gnu, will travel.
How difficult would it be to capture something like this? Couldn't a normal sensor sensitive to this wavelength capture this since the integration time is probably going to be longer than a few thousandths of a second?
Is it an obstacle that this is very rare? Or very faint?
Aliens ...playing with EMPs a million years ago?
Clearly these FRBs need to be downconverted to audio so a deaf guy can just "hear" the data in them, right on up to the higher order harmonics.
What's the frequency, Kenneth?
...they have experience with this kind of thing.
"Please stop broadcasting re-runs of welcome back kotter.....!"
My bet is that someone are saying "hello, have anyone there listening?" and they may be closer than researchers believe.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
And hook up a TV and big speakers to isolate the signal. Then once we decode it, we can transport a volunteer to the alien planet. Though, we should build two, just in case a religious terrorist blows one up. If we do this carefully, with Small moves, it's possible. Small moves.
Eh? Posted on wrong thread for some reason. Where is delete button when you need it???
>Aliens ...sending us messages a million years ago ... ?
Drink your Ovaltine.
While fast radio bursts last just a few thousandths of a second and have rarely been detected, the new result confirms previous estimates that these strange cosmic bursts occur roughly 10,000 times a day over the whole sky.
That's a lot of aliens. Or maybe we are inside of a slow thinking alien's head.
"Playing". Because the best sound comes from a vinyl LP powered by a Magnetar with monster cables, of course.
It reads.... "If you go to Z'ha'Dum, you will die".
Apparently it's a personal message for Commander Sheridan.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Problem solved.
Next?
"These fast radio flashes could just as easily turn out to be something entirely unpredicted."
Like someone stalled on the hyperspace bypass.. they keep trying to restart the ship but it just will not catch...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
We need to send in Jodie Foster, NOW!
It's worth pointing out that a good way to send a signal would be to have a bright but transient beacon, which doesn't itself transmit information (other than "here I am"), but serves to tell others where to point their high-gain radiotelescopes.
This could be what such a beacon would look like.
Not to mention the power output it would need to send a detectible signal from another galaxy.
From the summary: "bright flashes of radio waves that last only a few thousandths of a second.
A high power for a few milliseconds may not take an enormous amount of energy.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
While fast radio bursts last just a few thousandths of a second and have rarely been detected, the new result confirms previous estimates that these strange cosmic bursts occur roughly 10,000 times a day over the whole sky.
That's a lot of aliens.
Well, since there are 100 to 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe, not so many. One burst per galaxy every 50,000 years or so.
Or maybe we are inside of a slow thinking alien's head.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
"Sirs, I am happily to provide benefit of a unique opportunity. The Bank of Ursa Major has..."
Roger Waters "Amused to Death" in reverse.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Given the speed of light. It sounds to me like this was something that happened Long Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far Far Away...
This seems to ring a bell, but I can't place it.
in order to get them done with little time for someone to detect them and intercept them.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
These fast radio flashes could just as easily turn out to be something entirely unpredicted.
Music for Airports? Bowie? Art Bell?
As usual with astronomy articles, it can be found on the arXiv, freely available to all. It goes into much more detail than the article linked in the summary. Here is the abstract:
Recent work has exploited pulsar survey data to identify temporally isolated, millisecond-duration radio bursts with large dispersion measures (DMs). These bursts have been interpreted as arising from a population of extragalactic sources, in which case they would provide unprecedented opportunities for probing the intergalactic medium; they may also be linked to new source classes. Until now, however, all so-called fast radio bursts (FRBs) have been detected with the Parkes radio telescope and its 13-beam receiver, casting some concern about the astrophysical nature of these signals. Here we present FRB 121102, the first FRB discovery from a geographic location other than Parkes. FRB 121102 was found in the Galactic anti-center region in the 1.4-GHz Pulsar ALFA survey with the Arecibo Observatory with a DM = 557.4 \pm 3 pc cm^{-3}, pulse width of 3\; \pm 0.5 ms, and no evidence of interstellar scattering. The observed delay of the signal arrival time with frequency agrees precisely with the expectation of dispersion through an ionized medium. Despite its low Galactic latitude (b = -0.2^{\circ}), the burst has three times the maximum Galactic DM expected along this particular line-of-sight, suggesting an extragalactic origin. A peculiar aspect of the signal is an inverted spectrum; we interpret this as a consequence of being detected in a sidelobe of the ALFA receiver. FRB 121102's brightness, duration, and the inferred event rate are all consistent with the properties of the previously detected Parkes bursts.