Astronomers Record Mystery Radio Signals From 5.5 Billion Light Years Away 121
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 has been know for a while... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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No, no, no. It's remnants of yet another hyperspace bypass being built by the Volgons.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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Nah, wouldn't happen. It's more likely some transient event [tinyurl.com] like a black hole collision or a neutron star undergoing a transformation.
Or something.
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(Incidentally, goatse.cx is a perfectly respectable mail service these days. I use it for my online courses.)
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Astley is one of them.
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Re:This has been know for a while... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Wait.... Do you think that this is Bennett Haselton transferring is next article to Slashdot Editors???
Re:This has been know for a while... (Score:4, Funny)
No, no, you're falling into the old fallacy of confusing "information" and "data".
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"No Soap, Radio!"
Blah Blah Handwave (Score:2)
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The message seems to be NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP !
Have they been RICK ROLLING us?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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What I want to know is how we captured it real-time when it happened 5.5 billion years ago. Have the men in black invented time travel? WHAT ARE THEY NOT TELLING US??
Post-Singularity (Score:1)
Blitzars are the most common final stage of technological Singularities. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... [wikipedia.org]
When a Singularity has finally exhausted all local novelty in their system of origin and for lack of a better word become bored, they often tend to initiate a Blitzar-Epitaph. * Blitzar-Epitaphs are also often initiated in the case of detected approaching vacuum stabilization events or other impending local catastrophes.
This is a process by which a Singularity re-engineers all matter/energy in their sys
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"The rest of the message can only be guessed at."
Well, I'll guess. It's 42.
Re:This has been know for a while... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Thanks for that.
I've never been modded down before though. It kinda hurts.
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Re:This has been know for a while... (Score:5, Interesting)
Never? Really? Wow. There should be a special Achievement just for that.
Re:This has been know for a while... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:This has been know for a while... (Score:5, Insightful)
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"What, never?"
"Well, hardly ever!"
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What's wrong, actual english too hard for you?
What's wrong, actual capitalisation of proper nouns too hard for you?
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What's wrong, actual english too hard for you?
What's wrong, actual capitalisation of proper nouns too hard for you?
What's wrong: understanding the difference between "," and ":" too hard for you?
so there. hahahaHAAAAAAha
Re:This has been know for a while... (Score:5, Funny)
> only for it to be a hackneyed reference to a reddit meme so old that it's practically dust?
Well, it *was* coming from 5.5 billion light years away. They can't be expected to be up on the latest memes.
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You have never heard of a Shaggy Dog Story [wikipedia.org]?
Re:This has been know for a while... (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, I was duped into watching LOST too.
Those aliens are going to be pissed.
Agree. (Score:2)
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Boom. Boom. Boom. Another one bite's the dust... (Score:5, Funny)
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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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.
C'mon, there's got to be some highly implausible yet scientific sounding explanation that blames it on a time hole to the future slamming shut. Right? Maybe Elon Musk has been working on a time portal, but he hasn't quite figured out how to make it appear close enough to be usable?
Re:Boom. Boom. Boom. Another one bite's the dust.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Since I'm engaged in humorous speculation, I posit that stable vacuum events are either limited in size and scope or that they travel at less than C, or both.
Speaking of which, does the inside of a black hole qualify as a more stable type of vacuum? Being a fairly ignorant sort, can a physics guy out there enlighten me?
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Since I'm engaged in humorous speculation, I posit that stable vacuum events are either limited in size and scope or that they travel at less than C, or both.
Great! As a physicist, I eagerly look forward to your supporting math to back up those posits which contradict the math I have already seen.
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A massive spinning magnetron gradually slowing down until centrifugal force can't keep it from collapsing into a black hole anymore.
If you te going to make that much popcorn, you probably should not use microwave owen anyway. Use a kettle, it's cheaper, tastes better, and easier to get seasoning and butter just right.
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creating a spark that lasts seconds and outputs more energy than the sun has in the past million years.
Actually it lasts only about a millisecond, but the 1 MYears of solar output part is right. It's about the mass of the moon converted to RF energy in
1 ms.
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I felt it too. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I felt it too. (Score:4)
I fear something terrible had happened 5.5 billion light years away.
Well in that case it also happened 5.5 billion years ago, so your warning may be a little late. Then again they did say it happened long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away...
Re:I felt it too. (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, they just got their own version of Keeping up with the Kardashians.
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Yeah, they just got their own version of Keeping up with the Kardashians.
Are you sure it wasn't the Cardassians?
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Yeah, they just got their own version of Keeping up with the Kardashians.
Are you sure it wasn't the Cardassians?
I'm pretty sure that would be an improvement.
Speed Metal is love (Score:1, Funny)
Speed Metal is life
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OH!
You're saying that these intense, but short, broadcasts are examples of interstellar speed metal; a-la Napalm Death's sub-second song "You Suffer"
then say so!
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More like Nocturnus, Thresholds [http]-era.
Clickbait (Score:3)
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It's only "more powerful than a million suns" if it's omnidirectional.
If, like a pulsar, it's NOT omnidirectional, then it's not necessarily so powerful.
Caveat: it's crossing 5.5 gigalightyears. It's still pretty damn powerful, even if it's not "more powerful than a million suns"....
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Really, the time and distance depend on your point of view. From the photon's point of view, it hit Earth as soon as it was emitted, meaning that the distance is zero. From our point of view, the photons were emitted 5.5 billion years ago from a point rather far away (I was going to say 5.5 billion light-years, but due to space expansion I'm not nearly as confident of that).
WTF (Score:2, Troll)
Re:WTF (Score:5, Informative)
Re:WTF (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:WTF (Score:4, Informative)
Re:WTF (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:WTF (Score:4, Informative)
Some alien on a rural planet (Score:1)
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In "Real-Time"? (Score:2)
Is "real-time" the new "literally", where how much you mean it matters more than what the word actually means?
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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.
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Re: In "Real-Time"? (Score:2)
Re:Signal? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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i think in the case of vibrations in the ground many of them are from man communication signals. any time there is a nuclear test or contructing something it's a signal, "working on a test!" or something imilar. evn earthquakes are a way of the earth intellgiengtly giving feedback on its current geological state.
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i think in the case of vibrations in the ground many of them are from man communication signals.
Yes, and many of them are not. Just accept the meaning of the term "signal" already! Temperature readings are signals. Air pressure readings are signals. ALL measurements are signals. Otherwise what would be meant by "signal conditioning" etc, The conditioning og other people's transmissions? Signals are just the part you are interested in, as opposed to noise. WTF kind of a debate is this?
High Power Alien Communication Beam (Score:1)
Our Earth's orbit just crossed a High Power Alien Communication Beam between two of their outposts. Nothing to worry about...
FTL drive spinup (Score:2)
Clearly, this is the signature of an FTL drive spinning up. Pity the folks using it died out 5.4999 billion years ago.
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Clearly, this is the signature of an FTL drive spinning up. ...
The only thing that baffles me, is how far down I had to scroll before someone came to this obvious conclusion.
-HC
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Only Radio, Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
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...
Oh so that's what a "Blitzar" is... (Score:1)
A brief energetic burst...
Last time I heard it referenced was when I slept with a somewhat disappointed astroscience major.
*rimshot*
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Or maybe say this radio signal was bait/chum and we (or perhaps our planet) are the game in someone else's sport.
Apparently nobody has a clue about these so called FRBs, so nobody can prove us wrong ;^)
On the other hand it appears that these signals are pulse compressed a bit by some kind of intergalactic dispersive media (electron gas?) so if someone was actually looking for some thing in the intergalactic void, this is a pretty plausible analogy to deep seismic sounding [sciencemag.org] the cosmos...
They had their own LHC (Score:2, Funny)
Congratulations, another civilization just won the Intergalactic Darwin Award.
Spectrum shift (Score:1)
How do we know the original burst was radio? Wouldn't red/blue shift affect the entire electromagnetic spectrum, not just visible light? Could these be higher energy bursts (perhaps gamma emitted from known phenomena) red-shifted by our relative space/time/vector/position? I feel ignorant asking, but if we don't know where they came from or have any fix on the source, how do we know they were emitted as "radio"?
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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 C
I pitty the frequency (Score:1)
LHC (Score:2)
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No. They say: 'if the LHC created black holes, so would cosmic ray impacts.'
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I wonder how they gauge the energy (Score:2)
My logic tells me they should have already taken it into consideration, but if not it could explain the theorized super-duper-hyper-nova energy-levels, seeing as a sphere with radius 5.5 billion light years would require an enormous amount of energy to have its surface receive the measured levels of r
Break the /. rules - RTFPaper (Score:3)
"A real-time fast radio burst: polarization detection and multiwavelength follow-up" [arxiv.org]
It's also on Research Gate.
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