Astronomers Pinpoint Location of Mysterious Cosmic Radio Bursts (bbc.com) 48
New submitter Netdoctor writes: Fast Radio Bursts (FRB) are massively powerful short-lived radio bursts from far-away sources, and so far a number of theories exist on what generates them. Recently several were detected in the same general location, which adds to the mystery, as any of these pulses would be powerful enough to destroy a source. Since this group of FRBs were detected with single radio telescope dishes, the exact location was difficult to pinpoint. BBC reports here with results from the Very Large Array in New Mexico being trained on the source. From the report: "Outlining their work at a major conference, astronomers say they have now traced the source of one of these bursts to a different galaxy. Dr Chatterjee, from Cornell University, New York, and colleagues used a multi-antenna radio telescope called the Very Large Array (VLA), which had sufficient resolution to precisely determine the location of a flash known as FRB 121102. In 83 hours of observing time over six months in 2016, the VLA detected nine bursts from FRB 121102. In addition to detecting the bright bursts from FRB 121102, the team's observations also revealed an ongoing, persistent source of weaker radio emission in the same region. The flashes and the persistent source must be within 100 light-years of each other, and scientists think they are likely to be either the same object or physically associated with one another. He said some features of the radio source resembled those associated with large black holes. But he said these were typically found only in large galaxies."
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Wibbily Wobbly Timey Wimey (Score:1)
... powerful enough to destroy the source (Score:4, Funny)
I didn't know there were Samsung Galaxy phones in outer space...
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I, for one, welcome our new trope overlords...
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1) In soviet russia, trope slashdots you! ...?
2)
3) PROFIT!!
Personal experience (Score:5, Funny)
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Is it because of Jar-Jar?
Re:Personal experience (Score:4, Funny)
So, a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away, then?
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They also do Intergalactic traffic reports, but those aren't very timely unless you're close enough for the broadcast to fry you...
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They should try looking on the bottom of the router, or a sticky note under the keyboard.
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Are the bursts periodic? (Score:2, Informative)
Are the bursts periodic? If the hypothesis of a neutron star orbiting a black hole is correct, it suggests there should be not only a repeating series of bursts, but they should also be periodic. It's widely reported that the bursts are repeating, but I have yet to see any discussion of them being periodic. That may provide some clues as to the mechanism responsible.
Regarding the alien speculation from some (non-science) publications, it's easy to assume that aliens are responsible for unexplained radio sig
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Actually that's pretty easy to explain. It depends on your audience. If you are targetting primitive civilizations like ours, you're not going to use an advanced type of communication, but some sort of alien Morse code (or something even simpler).
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Maybe because they have tried targetting more advanced audiences, but no one seemed to be home?
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If you're targeting primitive civilizations, you do it locally, because there's no way a civilization in another galaxy like us can hope to respond. Also, this "transmitter" would probably fry any planet within a hundred light years it was aimed at.
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Aliens (Score:1)
Pin Pointed! (Score:3)
To within 100 light years!
Science!
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Pinpointed for sufficiently large pins.
Free Pizza? Free beer? (Score:2)
It's obviously an advertisement for Universal Pizza trumpeting their new intergalactic pizza delivery service. That's one of the few signals powerful enough to cut through the galactic noise.
The only other thing it might be is a "free beer while supplies last" beacon, which would also be powerful enough to attract attention of all sentient beings.
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They can have em!
The bursts are probably T's intergalactic tweets:
"Vader is a loser. Real men don't need helmets and don't breath through vacuum cleaners. My hair is my helmet, and it's very real, by the way. Very real."
"I'm gonna build my own black hole and make the Klingons pay for it. Those Klingons don't send us their best people, too many criminals. And they smell."
"The EM Drive is a Chinese conspiracy to fleece us so we pay for fake Galactic Warming fixes. It's a job killer for us."
"Dark matter is als