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Space

Something In Deep Space Is Sending Signals To Earth In Steady 16-Day Cycles (vice.com) 136

"Scientists have discovered the first fast radio burst that beats at a steady rhythm, and the mysterious repeating signal is coming from the outskirts of another galaxy," reports Vice: A mysterious radio source located in a galaxy 500 million light years from Earth is pulsing on a 16-day cycle, like clockwork, according to a new study. This marks the first time that scientists have ever detected periodicity in these signals, which are known as fast radio bursts (FRBs), and is a major step toward unmasking their sources.

FRBs are one of the most tantalizing puzzles that the universe has thrown at scientists in recent years. First spotted in 2007, these powerful radio bursts are produced by energetic sources, though nobody is sure what those might be... Pulses from these repeat bursts have, so far, seemed somewhat random and discordant in their timing. But that changed last year, when the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment Fast Radio Burst Project (CHIME/FRB), a group dedicated to observing and studying FRBs, discovered that a repeater called FRB 180916.J0158+65 had a regular cadence...

While we still don't know what is blasting out these bizarre signals, the discovery of a clear tempo from one of these sources provides a significant lead for scientists to follow.

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Something In Deep Space Is Sending Signals To Earth In Steady 16-Day Cycles

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  • A pale blue dot (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hairs rose on my arms as I wrote the above title.
    • Even more interesting....

      This thing pulses for 16.35 days, and then stops for 12 days and THEN repeats. So the cycle is actually 28.35 days, or roughly a 13th of the year, or roughly our moon's cycle. I thought that was interesting.

  • A repeater? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Tim Hamilton ( 5961502 ) on Sunday February 09, 2020 @06:44PM (#59708824)

    discovered that a repeater called FRB 180916.J0158+65 had a regular cadence...

    Way to make up terms already used for VERY COMMON other things in radio, Vice!

    Can we get some real sources, rather than millenial tabloids, PLEASE?

    • Yes, I saw "Vice" in the summary (I do read them) and came here to see how quickly the article (which I wont click on) is shat upon.

    • Re:A repeater? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Xhris ( 97992 ) on Monday February 10, 2020 @03:22AM (#59709780)

      I'm confused. Are you objecting to the term "repeater" here and blaming the reporter? Repeater is the term used for FRBs which, wait for it..., repeat.

      This sounds like you are trying to call out someone for being dumb but knowing nothing about what you are talking about.

      Maybe I have missed your point.

      • by Cederic ( 9623 )

        No, you're right. His ire should be directed towards the astronomers that started using the term, so that they can all point at him and laugh.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by tonique ( 1176513 )
      "Repeater" is a term used in astronomy, at least for soft gamma repeaters [wikipedia.org]. They are irregular though. Also, I think that "soft" in that means "soft" gamma rays, not that the emissions are feeble.
    • The editor - a highly maligned species at Slashdot Towers - or possibly the original submitter (who is not given, even as "AC" ; maybe EditorDavid is actually researching things for himself, just to confound the bad-mouthers) includes a link to the realest of real sources - the paper as submitted for publication.

      Unless you're the lead author of the paper and a senior partner in CHIME, in which case you can give us links to the extended data tables (which would normally only get published with the main publ

  • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Sunday February 09, 2020 @06:55PM (#59708852)
    The repeating signal will stop when the galaxy shifts out of reverse.
    • by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      If a signal is repeating at a regular predictable interval it's probably a natural source.

      It's when the signal seems to carry encoded information we shall start to investigate the potential for aliens. But I'd suspect that most unidentified signals that are seen and heard are human illegal activities.

      • If a signal is repeating at a regular predictable interval it's probably a natural source.

        Unless it's a beacon of some kind.

        • Sounds a lot like the acoustical beacon that repeats at intervals of 12 seconds found by our corporate researchers. We should probably send a bunch of space truckers, space Marines, or ill-prepared scientists to investigate immediately. Might be some bio-weapons profits in it. Sincerely, Weyland-Yutani Corp.

      • A compressed signal, which is what a sophisticated society would probably use for their internal communications, looks like noise. So does an encrypted signal.
  • by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Sunday February 09, 2020 @06:57PM (#59708860) Homepage Journal

    (Obligatory Independence Day reference.)

    • by EzInKy ( 115248 ) on Sunday February 09, 2020 @07:31PM (#59708946)

      We have a brand new corona virus all ready to be uploaded. Checkmate!

    • by lgw ( 121541 )

      I think the most likely alien radio signals to detect (assuming no one is actually trying to talk to us, which I think we would have heard by now) would be a GPS-like system for orbital navigation around a star. As we've seen on Earth, signals that are loud, omnidirectional, and unencrypted are already becoming a thing of the past. However, GPS-like navigational beacons are the one use case that needs to be omnidirectional, loud, and either unencrpyted or have enough of a pattern we can tell that it's a s

      • by _merlin ( 160982 )

        GPS isn't omnidirectional - it's facing down towards the planet. Any energy radiated away from the planet or past the edges of the planet is wasted. Also, the new generation of GPS satellites support spread spectrum mode, which has lower power spectral density and looks more like noise if you aren't specifically looking for it. I don't know how long it will be before the "classic" GPS signal is phased out, but when that happens GPS will look a lot more like noise.

        • by lgw ( 121541 )

          GPS isn't omnidirectional - it's facing down towards the planet.

          Think about a navigational system similar to GPS, but for the Solar system as a whole (it was the closest to a car metaphor I could manage for Slashdot). Something that provides highly precise orbital information for your ship or station with a cheap appliance.

          • by thogard ( 43403 )

            Some GPS chipsets already avoid noise from pulsars. Get away from earth and its RF noise and pulsars will be used as a planetary positioning system. Some existing systems have used pulsars for sub 6 ns accuracy where you GPS needs 90 ns to get a reasonable fix.

          • Something that provides highly precise orbital information for your ship or station with a cheap appliance.
            You don't need that in outer space. You simply look at the stars, the sun and the planets.

            But it is an interesting idea, there might be niche cases where something like this would be useful.

            • by lgw ( 121541 )

              You don't need that in outer space. You simply look at the stars, the sun and the planets.

              That's no different from Earth, after all. It's time consuming and inaccurate (relatively). The Apollo astronauts would verify their position with a sextant, because they didn't trust the nav computer. That's better today, of course, but the best positional info for orbits right now is just from terrestrial radar, but that obviously doesn't scale.

        • But the planet doesn't stop it all, and the planet reflects GPS frequencies back into space.
      • Probably just a probe beaming open source science data out to the neighborhood. Too bad we don't know the protocol.

      • would be a GPS-like system for orbital navigation around a star.
        Unlikely.
        I guess we would have trouble to pick up Earth GPS signals from Mars.
        No way to pick them up from the closest star system.

        If humanity does spread out into the solar system, it will be into an exponentially growing number of large rotating space habitats, first around the Earth and then into solar orbits near Earth's orbit. Eventually a system-wide navigation data system becomes needed.
        Sounds like a plan, sign me up!

        • by lgw ( 121541 )

          The signals would be pretty loud to flood the entire volume of the solar system with precise navigational data out to several AUs, and it there would be a lot of them, so in aggregate it would be quite a loud signal, even with no gain.

          Hard to detect? Sure. But we just had the first exoplanet discovered by an amateur astronomer not too long ago (Kojima-1), so it certainly seems possible with a bit more tech.

    • They abused him. Sexually.
  • by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Sunday February 09, 2020 @06:58PM (#59708868)

    Wait until you see the fines and jail terms.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • It's probably the Voyager 2.

  • by Laxator2 ( 973549 ) on Sunday February 09, 2020 @07:07PM (#59708896)

    If it were15 or 17 days, it would be just another run-of-the mill repeated signal from space, but 16 days ? Very, very suspicious !
    Then again, it may be just a coke bottle tangled in the string of the window blinds. (can you spot the movie reference ?)

    • We get your On The Beach reference. It is obviously a reference, and you ruined it by referring to the reference.
      • We get your On The Beach reference. It is obviously a reference, and you ruined it by referring to the reference.

        If it was so obvious you wouldn't have got it wrong - you got it wrong even after being given a clue.

        btw, the movie is "The Gods Must Be Crazy". Highly recommended.

    • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
      Because an Earth day has relevance in a galaxy 500 million light years away...
      • by AK Marc ( 707885 )
        No, but the Earth day has a relevance to us here. The fact that the signal is periodic is what's interesting. Either a very slow rotating body, or a very fast orbiting body. Most periodic signals are faster, being star rotation periods, or slower, being plant transitions (the fastest of which in our solar system is 88 days, much longer than 16 days).

        So the number would be uninteresting there, but the periodic nature and timing of it is interesting there, and interesting here.
        • by lgw ( 121541 )

          It's a bit odder than that. We don't know what these radio sources are to begin with, but if they were steady we could explain this one by a tight orbit around a white dwarf or neutron star, plus a bit a gravitational lensing to boost the signal once per orbit.

          But there's no easy way to explain why almost all FRBs are random, but just this one is periodic.

        • by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

          Not so suspicious though - it's a regular interval that might be explained by the precession of a fast-rotating object: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      • by Calydor ( 739835 )

        Would you rather have it explained as pulsing every 1,382,400 seconds? Or are seconds also a man-made thing and it should be calculated per number of carbon-14 decays or something like that?

    • by bjwest ( 14070 )
      I get the reference, but vaguely recall it as a Twilight Zone episode, not movie.
    • Maybe they're cycling between various powers of 2. Thing will get exciting if it were to change to 32 day periods next. Then this brings up the question of, if it is an alien civilization trying to communicate with us, how would they know how long an Earth day is if they are in fact residing in a neighboring galaxy?
  • The number you have dialled is unavailable.
    Please hang up and try a different number
    pip pip pip pip (1000 light years delay) pip pip pip pip (1000 light years delay) pip pip pip pip (1000 light years delay) pip pip pip pip
    Please hang up and try a different number
  • by pezpunk ( 205653 ) on Sunday February 09, 2020 @07:29PM (#59708940) Homepage

    this claim seems incredibly dubious to me. practically everything observable in the sky operates on regular repeating intervals of varying lengths. it seems really easy to imagine some source of radio emissions being blocked or misdirected by some other body or phenomena in 16-day cycles from our point of view.

    what would be unusual is if the cycle was an irregular, but recognizable, pattern. For example if the pattern was 1 [arbitrary time unit], 2 [time units], 3 [time units], 4 [time units], and then repeated, or if the pattern counted out the first ten prime numbers, or something like that. a signal that repeats at regular intervals seems very easly to explain via natural phenomena, and unlikely to be attempting to broadcast intelligence.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by aliquis ( 678370 )

      Maybe this is the case where if the clever people who know their things haven't come up with a first picks without knowing much about the subject may be stuff which isn't likely else they would had thought about it?

      Then again it could also just be that there's always the chance it's something else.

      Personally I don't know what this kind of bursts or whatever is so I'm not speculating =P

    • Sorry, that is utter nonsense.

      Signals like this come usually from Neutron stars. They radiate gamma or other em radiation along the axis of rotation out of their poles. Due to precession (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precession) that axis points periodically to a different spot. When it points at us - every 16 days - we get a signal ... simple.

      • That is incorrect. Please read the article, this one is actually pretty good. The subject of neutron stars is addressed.

    • They aren't saying that it being a repeating signal is unusual, but that it is significant in trying to figure out where the signals are coming from.
    • by jythie ( 914043 )
      Regular cycles are pretty common yes. The point here though is that FRBs generally do not have a regular pattern, if they even recur at all, so this object would be unusual in that it appears to be an FRB that repeats at regular intervals.
  • by An0nYm0u5c0wArD ( 6251996 ) on Sunday February 09, 2020 @07:29PM (#59708942)

    This is why we will never be visited by aliens.

    We just got the signal from an alien civilization that wants us to visit them. They sent the signal 500 million years ago.

    • And the restaurant reservation they'd made for us was last week!

    • 16 day cycle implies a 4 bit system. So that was 500 million years ago.

      But, you are wrong.

      Since then they have reached immortality and by recent news they visit earth to realise their animal and human fetishes.

    • This is why we will never be visited by aliens who are limited by the speed of light.

      We just got the signal from an alien civilization that wants us to visit them. They sent the signal 500 million years ago.

      FTFY.

      It's possible that there is simply no form of travel or communication faster than the speed of light. We certainly don't know of any. But if that's the case and there are intelligent aliens, then why isn't the sky littered with the radio wave detritus of ongoing or defunct alien civilizations?

      It's not an original question, and has many possible answers. Astronomers, science fiction authors, and philosophers have already proposed these ideas. But I think it's logical to not rule out possibilities wh

  • The number 16 stands out to me after playing No Man's Sky. This story is probably meaningless, but it would make an excellent social media post for them.
    • by Cederic ( 9623 )

      You're on Slashdot and the number 16 means something to you from a computer game?

      Not because it's a power of 2? Which, incidentally, is almost certainly why it has relevance in a computer game.

  • It's only 500 million light years away. Why don't we have a probe on it's way there already?
  • But it's the obvious joke.
  • by eford49 ( 3521375 ) on Sunday February 09, 2020 @09:22PM (#59709172)
    "Something in deep space is sending signals to earth..." implies intent. It's much more accurate simply to say that we're receiving signals from somthing in deep space.
    • by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      There are some things in space that do send signals intended for Earth, but all those things are man made as far as we know.

  • Or just sending signals?

    That we are receiving. And if there is any other intelligent life in our galaxy, they're receiving it too.

    But since it's in another galaxy it's even further away than anything that's even in our own galaxy. And thus not very interesting I would say.

    Interesting. Just not very interesting. For reference, our own Milky Way galaxy is over 100K light years wide. 500M light years is 5000 times further away than something on the other side of our own galaxy.

    Just saying.
  • He has begun building his galactic empire. First âoeSpace Forceâ now whatever this is... possibly a Death Star!

  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday February 09, 2020 @11:30PM (#59709442)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • If we were to detect a earth-like planet it would be very tempting to send a narrow-beam signal towards that planet even if it took half-a-billion years to get there, especially if we were able to detect high concentrations of oxygen in the atmosphere which might be due to the existence of oxygen-producing organisms perhaps very similar to the Cyanobacteria which oxygenated earth. We have already sent "messages" embedded in our probes (Voyager 1 & 2) and intentionally broadcast messages into space so th
    • We didn't even have the dinosaurs that far back. 500 million years ago, the mollusk was one of the more advanced life-forms on Earth. Even if aliens had wicked awesome antennas, if they were staring directly at us, they'd only be seeing those mollusks today.

      Unless ... it's the mollusks sending the signal to their families.

      They do have portable housing you know.

  • If something is sending signals to Earth then it is obviously very good of them to think of us.
  • by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Monday February 10, 2020 @07:43AM (#59710242)

    Think about what this means....

    The radio signals we are hearing originated 500 Million years ago, that's a LONG time.

    For us to hear them over the background noise, the amount of energy being sent at the transmit end is HUGE and/or the structures used to generate this RF are pretty massive when you consider the laws of physics.

    I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate that this is from some natural cause, not some extraterrestrial intelligence. Further, if I happen to be wrong, it doesn't matter because it will take at least billion years to know, assuming we build a transmitter capable of sending back "Hello" and getting a reply. A billion years is a long long time.. Not much we think is important today will be important in 1,000 years, this is a billion years, assuming humans are still a thing, nobody will remember that we even tried to send a message, much less what message we sent and why.

    • Even if "humans" were still around a billion years from now, they'd be unrecognizable to us humans from today. Modern humans are only 150,000 years old (give or take 50,000 years). A billion years ago, very simple multi-celled creatures were the height of evolution. If we were to move forward in time by a billion years, I doubt the "humans" around then would look anything like humans today. Even if they were descended from today's humans, time traveling humans from today might have a hard time telling if th

      • .time traveling humans from today might have a hard time....

        "The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined that Time Travel isn't possible" - And so did Stephen Hawking. Of all the things Hawking said that would never be provable, this is one that he actually backed up with a real experiment that I think proved his point pretty well. He held a party where nobody showed up, then sent invitations asking for time travelers to join him in the past. He was a clever guy...

  • So, specifically to Earth? Not just "out into space"?

    Or did Vice interview the interstellar aliens who are "sending out the signal" to ascertain their intended audience?

  • Sounds like a setup this novel by Lem: His Master's Voice. [wikipedia.org]

The best defense against logic is ignorance.

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