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Astronomers Record Mystery Radio Signals From 5.5 Billion Light Years Away
sarahnaomi writes For the first time ever, astronomers have captured an enormous radio wave burst in real time, bringing us one step closer to understanding their origins. These fleeting eruptions, called blitzars or FRBs (Fast Radio Bursts), are truly bizarre cosmic phenomena. In the span of a millisecond, they emit as much radiation as the Sun does over a million years. But unlike other super-luminous events that span multiple wavelengths—gamma ray bursts or supernovae, for example—blitzars emit all that energy in a tiny band of the radio light spectrum. Adding to the mystery is the rarity of blitzar sightings. Since these bursts were first discovered in 2007 with Australia's Parkes Telescope, ten have been identified, the latest of which was the first to be imaged in real time.
This is obviously an advanced data stream which we are intercepting. Civilizations who do not have control over quantum entanglement, Use compressed radio bursts at unbelievable magnitude to transfer massive amounts of information across multiple civilizations simultaneously.
This has been known for about 10 years. But suppressed due to it;s sensitive nature.
Attempts to decode the messages have only been marginally successful. The one small decoded message translated into English is roughly: "Never going to give..."
The rest of the message can only be guessed at.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
No worries ladies and gents. Just some black hole or star being absorbed into a circle of more stable vacuum than the twitchy sort of vacuum we have over here. Move along. Move along. There's literally nothing to see there.
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I felt a great disturbance, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible had happened 5.5 billion light years away.
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"“In real time here means, ‘as soon as the burst radiation arrives on the Earth,’” astronomer Daniele Malesani, co-author of a new paper about the discovery, told me over email. " So, not in real time then. "Astronomers record mystery signals" isn't as exciting though is it?
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Now now, we all know vacuum stabilization events travel out from their sources at the speed of light, if it were to happen it would be against the laws of physics to see it coming.
More interesting is one of the actual proposed explanations. A massive spinning magnetron gradually slowing down until centrifugal force can't keep it from collapsing into a black hole anymore. And when the source of the magnetic field suddenly gets cut off from the outside universe by being engulfed by the event horizon, the magnetic field has no where to go but... out. The most powerful magnetic field in the universe getting converted almost instantly to energy; creating a spark that lasts seconds and outputs more energy than the sun has in the past million years.
If you had read the article, you would know that until now, they had to sift through old data to find these things, so they couldn't ask other radio-telescopes to look at it. This time the data was analyzed in real time and triggered an alarm so other radio-telescopes could look at it in other wavelengths, etc.
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What they are, admittedly awkwardly, trying to say is that the Fast Radio Burst was detected as it was happening, enabling follow up investigations to catch the immediate after effects. Previous such bursts were detected much later, too late to do any kind of follow up leading some to question if the events were even extra planetary.
But unlike other super-luminous events that span multiple wavelengths—gamma ray bursts or supernovae, for example—blitzars emit all that energy in a tiny band of the radio light spectrum.
Why is this a mystery? 5.5 Billion years ago, did anyone have anything other than a radio? It wasn't like they could use a satellite dish or something...
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Reasonable nitpick, but yes: "signal" in the signal processing context means a detected quantity whose variations may tell you something. Vibrations in the earth, detected by a seismograph, are signals.
Congratulations, another civilization just won the Intergalactic Darwin Award.
Table-ized A.I.
This time the data was analyzed in real time and triggered an alarm so other radio-telescopes could look at it in other wavelengths, etc.
As it (or at least the interesting bit) lasted "the span of a millisecond", those other radio-telescope operators must have acted pretty quick.
In many cases they're looking for afterglow or secondary effects. When a gamma ray burst is observed, it's common to request optical telescopes to point in the direction of the burst in the hopes they'll see what caused it.
Yes, redshift affects all wavelengths equally. However, at the distance they cited, the cosmological red shift is only a factor of 3 in wavelength, which is just enough to shift visible into near-IR, while a shift from gamma to radio spectrum would need a factor of a billion. Current theories give the cosmic microwave background a redshift of around 1100, so we would not expect to see any cosmological red shifts larger than that for light, because the universe was opaque before the even that created the CMB.
Also, in these specific cases, radio interacts with the plasma between Earth and the source, and causes the energy to disperse and spread out as different frequencies travel at slightly different speeds (e.g. a whistler wave). This effect is effectively not existent with IR and higher energy light going through the space between galaxies, but does give an idea how far the light traveled based on how much the different frequencies spreed out and what we know of densities between galaxies.
In principle you could still get that much red shift from something falling into a black hole or something moving very fast, but there would be some more subtle issues with that.
They WERE recorded when they hit the Earth; they're NOTICED until much later, while sifting through old recordings.
As it (or at least the interesting bit) lasted "the span of a millisecond", those other radio-telescope operators must have acted pretty quick.
It is likely that other processes will be longer-lived. For example, if there are optical emissions associated with the event they likely involve hot matter, which will in most reasonable scenarios take much longer then milliseconds to cool down. Gamma rays from nuclear processes will likewise have lifetimes that can be into the seconds (from intermediate beta decays.)
There is a lot of mystery here. Collapsing neutron stars is on possibility, but getting the details right is going to be interesting. The billion light-year distance seems to come from dispersion measurements, which require that the initial pulse be much narrower than the observed pulse. Interstellar (and intergalactic) plasma slows down different radio wavelengths by slightly different amounts, so it will tend to spread out. By looking at the spread as a function of frequency it is possible to get an estimate of distance, but it depends on a lot of assumptions being correct.
There is still a chance, albeit small, that these are closer than currently believed.
Finally, it is worth noting that the first few detections of these things were all from the same radio telescope, and the scientific community did what we always do when something weird is seen only in one place: put on a side-bet that it was equipment malfunction, because the odds are always good on that.
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I think some far away scientist just said "don't worry, our LHC can not create a black ho..."
When an event emits at a particular wave-length; that event probably emitted at other wavelengths as well. Since different wavelengths travel at different speeds, it's still possible to observe other data from the same event a bit later.
"A real-time fast radio burst: polarization detection and multiwavelength follow-up"
It's also on Research Gate.
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