New Findings Deepen the Mystery of Fast Radio Bursts

An anonymous reader writes: Last week, it was reported that the mystery of fast radio bursts were solved, and that they were due to the merger of a neutron star with another collapsed object, well outside of our galaxy. However, not only was that analysis fundamentally flawed, but a new paper out today identifies fast radio bursts that repeat, a dealbreaker for the merger scenario. Instead, it's thought that these events come from the evolution of young neutron stars, as the data show an extragalactic but non-transient origin for these bursts. Planned follow-up observations plan on identifying the source locations as well as their true nature, and discerning whether all fast radio bursts have the same origin, or whether there are multiple different classes.

Comments

Do we know this isn't gravitational lensing?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> fast radio bursts that repeat, a dealbreaker for the merger scenario

Do we know this isn't gravitational lensing? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens)

Re:Do we know this isn't gravitational lensing?

[amRadioHed]

It would be obvious if the repeated results were from lensing since the signals would come from two different locations. Also, there might be some clue in the signal if it was just a repeat of the same event.

Re:Do we know this isn't gravitational lensing?

[coastwalker]

I have not seen any discussion on FRB with respect to lensing so I do not know whether gravitational lensing is involved. Increases in the number and effectiveness of observation tools over the next few years will provide a big enough sample of these events to start characterizing them better though.

I think that in some sense this field is bigger than gravitational wave astronomy right now. It will be a while before the required new gravitational wave detectors find and locate many sources.

The field of FRB's is definitely one where interesting new science is likely to appear soon. It is quite exciting to see these early papers contradicting each other as new data comes in - this is bleeding edge science going on right before our eyes.

Re:Do we know this isn't gravitational lensing?

[dsmatthews9379]

Exactly, in fact there is vector that joins any two place in the universe that traverses each black hole's event horizon, they are universal information routers therefore a huge primary burst that is shielded by one black-hole will manifest as multiple smaller echoes as it is routed to the observer with time delays according to the individual path distances, accounting for the fact that there is also further shielding of some of the echoes by other bodies.

Re:Do we know this isn't gravitational lensing?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be obvious if the repeated results were from lensing since the signals would come from two different locations.

These signals have been detected with single-dish radio telescopes, which don't have very good resolution: they can only say where the burst came from to within a quarter-degree or so. So, if it was gravitational lensing, the bursts would come from different locations - but probably still too close to distinguish them with current measurements.

Also, there might be some clue in the signal if it was just a repeat of the same event.

One possibility: if you were seeing multiple lensed copies of the same event, you'd expect them (I think) to have the same spectrum. But the paper says that the repeated events they've seen "show a wide range of spectral shapes".

I give up about this country

[Anonymous Coward]

Brazil is nothing but a big fucking webcam porno house after all.

Re:I give up about this country

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, nice to have something to export, I guess. Venezuela is importing oil now.

Re:I give up about this country

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not true, you have fantastic tranny factories as well.

They're the ovens

[Anonymous Coward]

These are just the microwave ovens...

Re: They're the ovens

[Anonymous Coward]

Whrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr *ding*

Re:They're the ovens

[coastwalker]

It was realized fairly quickly that the Parkes Perytons caused by the microwave oven were different to the initial FRB.

"Emily Petroff (Swinburne University of Technology, Australia) says that the discovery team knew early on that these so-called perytons were local. The observatory watches along 13 different radio beams as the dish sweeps across the sky. Any point-like astrophysical source will be brightest at just one of those frequencies. Perytons, however, appear equally bright in all 13 beams."

Tis a war I tells ya

[ambisinistral]

Feh, sounds like intergalactic war to me.

Possible explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

I would expect that when a ship transitions into or out of warp drive, it would cause something like this focused tightly along the path of travel. My guess is that this is the cause of these events and a clever scientist probably could use the frequency of detection to estimate the number of technologically advanced civilizations in the universe (or, at least their density and distribution out to several billion light years). Also, spectrographic analysis of the radio bursts may yield some clues to the method being employed, could potentially even be the primary vector by which such knowledge spreads through the universe from species to species.

Re:Possible explanation

[ClickOnThis]

The Fermi Paradox pokes some pretty large holes in your theory.

Occam's Razor encourages us to look for more ordinary explanations first.

Re:Possible explanation

[sinij]

Occam's Razor encourages us to look for more ordinary explanations first.

Yes, if we apply Occam's Razor, we can deduce that this is just Zorlax the Mighty trying to connect on LinkedIn.

Re:Possible explanation

[ShanghaiBill]

The Fermi Paradox pokes some pretty large holes in your theory.

The Fermi Paradox only applies to civilizations in our own galaxy, not to events happening billions of LYs away. There are plausible explanations for why civilizations might be rare in our own galaxy, yet common in other galaxies. For instance, a hypernova about 4 billion years ago may have sterilized much of the Milky Way, exterminating life on many planets that could have gone on to evolve intelligent beings.

Occam's Razor encourages us to look for more ordinary explanations first.

Occam's Razor is a good rule of thumb for respectable scientific hypotheses, not for speculative conjectures on Slashdot.

Re:Possible explanation

[wonkey_monkey]

I would expect that when a ship transitions into or out of warp drive, it would cause something like this focused tightly along the path of travel.

And you expect that based on... what? A few seasons of TNG and BSG?

My guess is that this is the cause of these events and a clever scientist...

...would have a better theory.

Re:Possible explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

Occam's Razor encourages us to look for more ordinary explanations first.

It does no such thing! Occam's Razor simply states that when encountering two (apparently) equally effective models to explain an unknown, it is preferential to assume the mathematically simpler is accurate until it is found to be flawed.

However, some Cult-like misunderstanding of his statement seems to be the defining philosophical dogma of an unfortunate amount of otherwise educated and often rational individuals. I've seen people arguing for a disproven model over a more complex one that continues to fit observations "because Occam's Razor."

Re:Possible explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

The only scientific hypotheses I respect are the ones derived from speculative conjecture on Slashdot. Everything else is just theoretical wankery.

Re:Possible explanation

[Hylandr]

Possible explanations first yes, but not at the exclusion of exploring all possibilities.

Columbus: "What if the world is Round?"
Dark Ages: "Occam's Razor: It's simpler to believe it's flat. Leave it alone."

Re:Possible explanation

[Hylandr]

Can we, or have we mapped where these are coming from?

Re:Possible explanation

[amRadioHed]

You basically just repeated what the parent post said. The simpler explanation is the more ordinary one that requires the least unproven assumptions.

Re:Possible explanation

[Gavagai80]

Everyone knew the world was round, if you live near an ocean it's very hard not to notice. Columbus just thought it was half as big around as everybody else did, so they predicted he'd starve before he reached India.

Re:Possible explanation

[Hylandr]

Revisionist history much?

Re:Possible explanation

[amRadioHed]

No, not at all. Google Eratosthenes.

Re:Possible explanation

[coastwalker]

To be fair warp drive is being speculatively thought about and some models would produce a flash. See the serious overview for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?... "Warp drives and bending time Prof Tamara Davis" Australian Academy of Science. "It could be that the optic boom of arrival at the destination would fry the destination" "The energy required to operate the drive could exceed that contained in the mass of the observable universe"

However the energy currently thought to be involved in a FRB is way outside anything human civilization could do - e.g. Wikipedia records the energy of one FRB as "The power exceeded 1.3×10*42 ergs/s. That is estimated to be as much energy in one millisecond as the Sun emits in 10,000 years"

So it is not likely to be warp drive given what we understand.

Re:Possible explanation

[Livius]

No, if you go there and check, it turns out India is not in the Caribbean.

Re:Possible explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

Revisionist history much?

Yes. Everyone thought Columbus was crazy, that is why he got government support for a really expensive expedition.

Re:Possible explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

He seems to have a better grasp than you do:

As far back as the 3rd century BC, Eratosthenes had correctly computed the circumference of the Earth by using simple geometry and studying the shadows cast by objects at two different locations: Alexandria and Syene (modern-day Aswan).[30] Eratosthenes's results were confirmed by a comparison of stellar observations at Alexandria and Rhodes, carried out by Posidonius in the 1st century BC. These measurements were widely known among scholars, but confusion about the old-fashioned units of distance in which they were expressed had led, in Columbus's day, to some debate about the exact size of the Earth.

Toscanelli's notions of the geography of the Atlantic Ocean, which directly influenced Columbus's plans
From d'Ailly's Imago Mundi Columbus learned of Alfraganus's estimate that a degree of latitude (or a degree of longitude along the equator) spanned 56 miles, but did not realize that this was expressed in the Arabic mile rather than the shorter Roman mile with which he was familiar (1,480 m).[31] He therefore estimated the circumference of the Earth to be about 30,200 km, whereas the correct value is 40,000 km (25,000 mi).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus#Geographical_considerations

Re:Possible explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

You witless nincompoops, The ship stays where it is and the engines move the universe around it.

bah... simpletons!

Re:Possible explanation

[Hylandr]

I am more than a little angry with the US Public school system and 43 years of popular media...

Re: Possible explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

And those aren't the biggest issues considering the inside of the bubble experiences radiation that diverges when travel exceeds c, and the bubble is causally isolated from the inside, so you would need it to be generated by stuff in front of it...

Re:Possible explanation

[khallow]

And Columbus would have starved too, if there wasn't a continent in the way.

Re: Possible explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh.

Re:Possible explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you completely misunderstand. It has nothing to do with "unproven assumptions," it purely has to do with the mathematical complexity of an issue. Occam's Razor has nothing to do with trying to explain why something does what it does, it is purely in the scope of modelling the behavior of what something does. Everyone (like you) who tries to apply it beyond that is delving into the realm of incompetent hard-dogma philosophy.

In the same vein in today's Nature edition

[Anonymous Coward]

There seem to be a gigantic particle accelerator somewhere close to the center of the Milky Way:

http://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/pressreleases/2016/6
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v531/n7592/full/nature16976.html

Aliens

[kwiecmmm]

I'm not saying it is aliens, but it is aliens.

Re:Aliens

[sartwell]

Contact? Seen the movie, read the book?

Perytons , pulsars, ET & microwave oven RFI

[volvox_voxel]

The internet was buzzing about a possible ET contact. Short radio bursts were detected from radio telescopes over multiple antennas over many years that had no natural explanations that researchers claim could only be man made or from an extra-terrestrial:

http://www.newscientist.com/ar... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

The paper from the actual researchers is far more guarded, and suggest that it may be EMI similar to Perytons, which are radio sources that appear to look like a pulsar signature.

From Wikipedia - "In 2015, Perytons were found to be the result of premature opening of microwave oven doors at the Parkes Observatory. The microwave oven releases a frequency-swept radio pulse that mimics an FRB as the magnetron turns off.[2][10]"

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1503.0524...

Here is a paper on Perytons, and their possible sources: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1404.5080...

Here is a link on Pulsar physics, including a very basic back of the envelope derivation of the dispersion medium of pulsars. Apparently two pulses from a pulsar are detected a few milliseconds from one another, and stem from the mass difference between the electron and a proton and their interaction with interstellar space. Still trying to get a handle on this.. http://www.cv.nrao.edu/course/...

Dispersion measure variations and their effect on precision pulsar timing: http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.a...

Re:Perytons , pulsars, ET & microwave oven RFI

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently two pulses from a pulsar are detected a few milliseconds from one another...

This is a slightly misleading way to think about it. What happens is this: the pulsar emits a single pulse, which contains radio waves at a range of frequencies. Radio waves passing through a plasma travel at slightly under the speed of light. The lower their frequency, the slower they go. So the highest-frequency part of the pulse arrives first, followed by the medium frequencies, then the low frequencies. It's not a matter of two separate pulses: there's still only a single pulse, but it's stretched out, sweeping down in frequency.

Re:Perytons , pulsars, ET & microwave oven RFI

[volvox_voxel]

Your group velocity dispersion argument makes sense.

Flawed?

[Dcnjoe60]

However, not only was that analysis fundamentally flawed...

That's not possible. I read it on /.

That was an 19th century lie

[aepervius]

The age of enlightenment lie by excellence. Since they were so "enlighted" then the previous age must have been dumb idiot. Thus the myth cropped up that people thought the earth was flat. Actually among the scholar and sailor (those who count with respect to this myth) they knew and were taught the earth was a sphere, and had pretty good estimate back in the ancient greek world. As for the paysant/serf who know what they taught beyond "will I have bread tomorrow".