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Scientists Propose Using Fast Radio Bursts To Chart Universe In 3D

Posted by timothy on from the they're-using-active-sonar dept.

hypnosec writes: Using redshifts, fast radio bursts and state of the art technology, researchers at University of British Columbia have proposed a new method of calculating distance between celestial objects, and mapping the cosmos in 3D. Published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the research describes the proposal to use fast radio bursts to calculate cosmological distances. Though only 10 or so of these FRBs have been detected so far, UBC scientists are of the opinion that thousands of these FRBs must be happening each day.

27 comments

  1. Not tachyons? by KatchooNJ · · Score: 3, Funny

    What?! No love for my favorite sci-fi method of sending waves huge distances and through time? I refuse to be satisfied until my sci-fi fantasy is a reality!

    --
    "Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
    1. Re:Not tachyons? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 4, Funny

      I refuse to be satisfied until my sci-fi fantasy is a reality!

      Me too! But... you probably don't want to know what mine involves.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    2. Re:Not tachyons? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No it has to be an Inverse-Tachyon Pulse

    3. Re:Not tachyons? by war4peace · · Score: 1

      I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    4. Re:Not tachyons? by KatchooNJ · · Score: 1

      Geordi, how many jiggawats does that require?

      --
      "Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
    5. Re:Not tachyons? by FatdogHaiku · · Score: 1

      I refuse to be satisfied until my sci-fi fantasy is a reality!

      Me too! But... you probably don't want to know what mine involves.

      To seek out new life forms,
      and explore strange new orifices!
      *odds are high of occasionally discovering teeth...

      --
      You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
    6. Re:Not tachyons? by lexmarkprinterinfo · · Score: 1

      Really they are going to be better to understand that object. This kind of researcher gives us the better future and living. So, i m really grateful to be here.

    7. Re: Not tachyons? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nah, that would never work. See, FRBs are actually alien warp core explosions. If they emitted tachyons, the crew would detect them before the breach, and fix/shut down the warp drive. Thus no explosion, and no FRB. At least in this particular neck of the multiverse.

  2. Freudian slip? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    From TFA:

    as fast radio busts travel towards Earth, they spread out

  3. New General CATalogue by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 2

    Go look into the math of CAT scanning -- with enough bursts at enough angles, you might be able to do something similar, for even greater mapping potential.

    You're welcome.

    --
    (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    1. Re:New General CATalogue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      In CAT scanning, you measure the density along multiple *intersecting* sightlines through the target medium. In this case, all your sightlines are radial from the earth, and none of them intersect. It's more akin to a conventional x-ray than to a CAT scan: you only get to see the target from a single direction, unless you want to schlep your telescope a few million light-years away to get another angle.

      Ironically, some of the maths of CAT scanning - in particular, the convolution kernels used for gridding - came out of radio astronomy. But from interferometric imaging, which isn't the same branch of radio astronomy as in this article.

  4. ET was just heating a burrito. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    From Wikipedia, Closely related to fast radio bursts are Perytons, dispersed pulses which share some of the same characteristics as FRBs, but are of terrestrial origin. Perytons were shown in April 2015 to be due to emissions from premature opening of microwave oven doors in the Parkes observatory cafeteria,[7] while FRBs remain as most likely high energy astrophysical sources.

  5. Oh great. by funwithBSD · · Score: 1, Funny

    Why not just a hang a giant sign on the planet that says "EAT AT EARTH'S" for the aliens?

    --
    Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
    1. Re:Oh great. by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      I know you're being funny, but on a more serious note:

      No need. The friendly ones _already_ know about us.

      When First Contact happens by 2022~2024 the mass populous will (finally) be allowed to know about our progenitors.

    2. Re:Oh great. by Hussman32 · · Score: 1

      AFAICT, the article is discussing receiving the fast radio bursts, not sending them.

      --
      "Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
    3. Re:Oh great. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No way. It would happen in 3000 BC, when we were obviously worth talking to by standards of what a society is, or some post singularity / far future time when we are obviously worth talking to by standards of some aliens. Why let us sit around with just enough tech to kill all of ourselves for some arbitrary century or so? It doesn't seem reasonable. If they've been hanging out and watching, then they sure have witnessed a lot of suffering a death. They implicitly are ok with every military faction between when they noticed us and now, for instance.

      And don't gimme some crap about waiting for some enlightened first world philosopher to come up with exactly the right magic combination of thoughts. If they are waiting for just the proper brand of communism or what the fuck every ideology, then they are such monumental assholes that we may as well start preparing tech for our inevitable revolt.

    4. Re:Oh great. by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

      Do you go to Africa and make the lions stop killing the zebras?

      --
      If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
    5. Re:Oh great. by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      > Why let us sit around with just enough tech to kill all of ourselves for some arbitrary century or so?

      1. You don't ruin (interfere) the Experiment of Free-Will by interfering with it until consciousness has evolved enough to think bigger then itself.

      2. You underestimate just how crippling xenophobia would have been in the 20th century. There is (finally) enough consciousness not afraid of the unknown hat the effect for First Contact will be more beneficial then negative.

      3. **Everything** happens in a cosmic time schedule.

      > enlightened first world philosopher

      There have been many of those. They usually end up getting killed by the ignorant masses as the many have not yet learnt the Law of Karma: Only cowards use violence; every time you hurt others you hurt yourself. The philosophy of Might Makes Right is a spiritual childish one; hell, most of the planet STILL hasn't grown up.

      > It doesn't seem reasonable.

      Things don't seam reasonable because you're only viewing 1/10 of (physical) reality. Without understanding the nature of Truth that is both Absolute and Relative, nothing at a higher level of human intelligence will.

      > If they are waiting for just the proper brand of communism or what the fuck every ideology,

      The **balance** of the needs-of-the-one vs the needs-of-the-many is still severely out of balance. Japan is the perfect example how disastrous putting others above oneself, you end up with a generation of people stuffing their emotions with the highest suicide rate. Conversely, America is the perfect example of putting one's needs above everyone else, where Wall St. and Big Religion fucks everyone over in the name of (false) profits.

  6. IT people must hide! by Dareth · · Score: 1

    IT people must hide! Aliens will dig you out of your parent's basement and boil your kidneys for a nice caffeinated beverage.

    --

    I only look human.
    My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
  7. I just downloaded it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    but I'm going to need a bigger filament.

  8. Why Nada since 05/14/2015? by DumbSwede · · Score: 1

    I have been keeping an eye on FRB reports for the last year or so.
    It seems curious there is a lot of news about looking for them, but none detected past 05/14/14, or at least as last posted on wikipedia

    Have the programs that detected them in the past been shut down? When do the new programs come online? Usually when there is a hot new science mystery, resources go up in the search not down. Why the dearth of detections? Only 11 since 2001, mostly in 2011 and 2012 (6 of the 11).

    --
    Letter To Iran
  9. ... thousands by Triklyn · · Score: 1

    say you wanted to chart the galaxies, with 100billion of those.. you'd still need something like 270000 years to get all of them right? without overlap?

    i'm not saying it's not useful, but you've got random sources, firing... like super sporadically.

    wouldn't it be like saying,

    "yeah, we've got this new method of mapping the earth.

    we'll read the geological signals put out by earthquakes to map the shape of the crust-mantle interface."

    while interesting, i'd doubt the usefulness of it in getting a complete picture.

    1. Re:... thousands by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      say you wanted to chart the galaxies, with 100billion of those.. you'd still need something like 270000 years to get all of them right? without overlap?

      i'm not saying it's not useful, but you've got random sources, firing... like super sporadically.

      wouldn't it be like saying,

      "yeah, we've got this new method of mapping the earth.

      we'll read the geological signals put out by earthquakes to map the shape of the crust-mantle interface."

      while interesting, i'd doubt the usefulness of it in getting a complete picture.

      Yes...you're right. It's just like studying the stars. There are so many of them out there that even though we have thousands of telescopes that can look at many stars a night, we could never study them all. It's a good thing we never bothered to go down that rabbit hole. If we can't have it all at once, I don't want any of it at all.

      Like all things astronomical, we have no chance of ever getting the "entire picture" of anything.

    2. Re:... thousands by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're right, it doesn't let you chart individual galaxies - but it does let you chart out the really large-scale structures, like superclusters and cosmological filaments, that have tens of thousands of galaxies in them.

      In your analogy, it doesn't let you map small-scale structures in the crust-mantle interface - but it does let you see whether the crust is thicker under one continent or another, or find the edges of the intercontinental plates.

  10. My bad, I meant 05/14/2014? by DumbSwede · · Score: 1

    Typo in original post, none detected in over a year. 05/14/2014

    --
    Letter To Iran
    1. Re:My bad, I meant 05/14/2014? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      There are a couple of reasons for that, that don't involve the universe going quiet on us. The first is that there's a delay between the FRB being detected and the FRB being noticed: most of the FRBs on that list were found by trawling through archived data from years ago, using improved signal-processing techniques. The second is that there's a delay between the FRB being noticed and the FRB being published: the astronomers take a while to analyse it, measure its dispersion and spectrum, make sure it's real, etc., before they submit a paper describing it. And then there's a further delay while another scientist peer-reviews the paper, sends back comments, requires changes, etc., before the paper is published.

      Once detecting FRBs becomes routine - the bugs in the equipment are worked out, the analysis techniques are standardised, etc. - then they'll probably start publishing them within a day or so with a quick Astronomers' Telegram, rather than writing up a whole paper about each one. Eventually, they'll probably start issuing automated alerts, so other telescopes can start slewing around to take a look at the FRB within seconds of it going off. But for now, we're stuck with this year-or-so delay between detection and publication.

    2. Re:My bad, I meant 05/14/2014? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In January, for the first time a real time alert was issued for one. Part of the issue is telescopes are not always looking for them.