Unknown Space Object Beaming Out Radio Signals Every 18 Minutes Remains a Mystery (cnn.com) 99
While mapping radio waves across the universe, astronomers happened upon a celestial object releasing giant bursts of energy -- and it's unlike anything they've ever seen before. From a report: The spinning space object, spotted in March 2018, beamed out radiation three times per hour. In those moments, it became the brightest source of radio waves viewable from Earth, acting like a celestial lighthouse. Astronomers think it might be a remnant of a collapsed star, either a dense neutron star or a dead white dwarf star, with a strong magnetic field -- or it could be something else entirely. A study on the discovery published Wednesday in the journal Nature. "This object was appearing and disappearing over a few hours during our observations," said lead study author Natasha Hurley-Walker, an astrophysicist at the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, in a statement. "That was completely unexpected. It was kind of spooky for an astronomer because there's nothing known in the sky that does that. And it's really quite close to us -- about 4,000 light-years away. It's in our galactic backyard."
From TFA (Score:3, Insightful)
"it could be an ultra-long-period magnetar" - an interesting find, but the Ancient Aliens still remain elusive.
Also, the CNN article doesn't load for me.
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All signals contain information, the question is what level of coherence does the information have. I am not an expert, just a curious individual, and I have heard of Benford's and Zipf's laws, but not sure how would they apply to this signal.
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Potentially, but I believe that Brannigan's law is closer to what this actually is. Though I could be wrong. I'm certainly no expert.
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How do you define "signal" and "information" to reach that conclusion?
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Um... the dictionary, for example?
Not sure what you are aiming at, but a good start would be to ad more verbosity to your question.
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From the synopsis: "The emission is highly linearly polarized, bright, persists for 30–60s on each occurrence and is visible across a broad frequency range. At times, the pulses comprise short-duration (0.5s) bursts; at others, a smoother profile is observed. These profiles evolve on timescales of hours."
To me this sounds like a rather active environment at the presumed neutron star, that can be observed for a short period of time whenever its poles are pointed the right way.
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Beeps contain information. Morse code users can attest to this, as can sonar and radar designers.
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And "just a beep" can be nearly impossible to tell from the signal itself. One city's automotive backfire is another city's lethal robbery, or another city's marathon starting pistol. It can be very difficult to tell from the explosive sound itself.
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No. Morse code users (and many other such systems) extract information from the spacing of "beep versus "non-beep" states.
A "beep" with a complex internal structure (say, FM or AM of the carrier wave frequency, or PCM of two carrier waves) can contain a signal in itself, and more information in it's relationships with other pulses.
One of these days you should try extracting information from a 1-2 Hz extremely noisy signal on top of distinct no
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The data of the timing of beeps can be reasonably described as "contaned by the beeps".
What were you measuring? It "sounds like" subsonic submarine communications?
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I had one job - one in
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Oh, my. That does sound like it could present some difficulties, the sort of situation where simply throughng computation at it and ignoring the medium of transmission and "top-down" design could lead to profound errors in every way.
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Another thing they added (again, all the companies at about the same time) was putting a delay loop into the system so they could compare the recorded sound of t
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It's never aliens. . . . . until it is
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No, the default is aliens. Congress passed the Make Aliens Prominent Again Act. Go Grey!
it's fucking aliens! (Score:2)
like radio beam fucking them?
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drunk aliens; the worst kind
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it's fucking aliens!
So the beams of energy are actually some kind of alien semen?
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Yip, and Don's head gave birth to one of them. Tribble-like, I must say.
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How else do you think they spread among the galaxy?
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We know its spinning because that's by far the best explanation for any radiation that pulses at regular intervals with no variations.
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Things that spin typically either speed up due to losing mass while trying to conserve angular momentum, or else they slow down due to friction with atmospheres
Objects like black holes, neutron stars, etc. neither lose mass nor have atmospheres.
or the gravitational pull of other relatively nearby objects.
That assumes that the nearby object is of sufficient mass for the effect to be noticeable. If this object is a black hole, it could be million times more massive than nearby objects.
So I would expect the rate to be changing over time, although probably by only a miniscule amount.
Sure, but there are limits to measurement that may not be able to detect the miniscule amount.
Re:Spinning (Score:5, Funny)
Objects like black holes, neutron stars, etc. neither lose mass nor have atmospheres.
Hawking radiation has entered the chat
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> Objects like black holes, neutron stars, etc. neither lose mass nor have atmospheres.
They may accretion disks or other accumulated, not necessary so exotic mass in orbit that may be involved in signals, even periodic signals, generated by such objects. The details of this one are not understood and may turn out to be fascinating.
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As "GeekMeister" points out, they can accrete matter, which both changes their mass and their rotation rate.
Additionally, neutron stars have surfaces, of a considerable strength. Which can accumulate stresses (magnetic, thermal, as well as impact from accreted material), leading to fractures, and then "ringing". At which point, the whole panoply of seismology comes into play, and you can start to extract the stiffness, the
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Magnetars are expected to slow down over time but it may not be detectable. I think the long rotational period would make it difficult to measure the length of the cycle with nanosecond precision in the first place. This object is also apparently rather active so the pulses are not identical.
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IIUC, magnetars rotate rapidly - but with a noticeable drag force from their interaction with their environment. The 18-odd minute signal I'm expecting to be nutation as the spin axis rotates in response to some other t
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Re: Spinning (Score:2)
Emperor of Mankind (Score:1)
Finally,
We can see the Astronomican again!
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In a world filled with climate control and artificial lighting combined with our slow movement to being a spacefaring and colonizing civilization it might be time to consider a calendar that no longer revolves around agriculture.
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For those of us who regularly go outside, having a calendar that revolves around our planets natural cycles that we have evolved to be in sync with is a benefit.
With the exception of Mars, I can't see any reason to change if we move into space, well maybe some rounding.
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What benefit is that? Changing the clock isn't going to change those cycles, you don't gain or lose any time. In fact there are 1440 mins in a day and that evenly divides by 18 min to 80 so if they carved it that way it would very nicely align to our existing calendar and the only change would be the number and duration of hours we split the same
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Guess habit as much as anything. If someone gives me a time or date, I automatically have a good idea of daylight and weather. Need to go somewhere at 6 AM on Jan Xth, Don't have to think to know I'll be leaving in the dark with a good chance of snow or ice.
There's a lot of inertia in our calendar with seasons and daylight being the obvious. Last time the calendar was changed (Julian to Gregorian), there was a lot of resistance and even today the change isn't complete, Russia observes Christmas on a differe
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We are going hiking tomorrow and want to get together at first light. What time should we meet? used to be 06:00, now it is 6x3 or 18:
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Consider other changes in measurements. Went from Imperial to metric 50 odd years back here. Groceries are still advertised in pounds (receipt shows Kilos or per 100 grams). Lumber is still bought as 2x4's, 4x8 sheets of plywood etc. Even dirt is sold by the yard. I even calculate my mileage in miles per gallon. This is 50 years after the government mandated the change (courts responded that the government couldn't mandate speech like not advertising in pounds).
Look at America, still haven't caught up to im
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As I said in my other comment the 1440 minutes of our current day is evenly divisible by this 18 minute interval (that may diverge considering units smaller than a minute
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Perhaps we should just change our base. Inuit used base 8 (counted using the gaps between fingers), Babylon used base 60 and base 12, nicely divisible into halves, thirds and quarters, even 6ths. Today with computers, many of us already use base 16, easily halved and halved again.
It's as likely to happen.
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The rotation of massive bodies has always been how we measure, hell, even define, time.
The first clocks were sundials, relying on the consistent periods of both the earths rotation and orbit.
The second clocks were astrolabes, again relying on the consistent period of both the earths rotation and its orbit.
Things more massive than the earth, like a star that we can still see even though its thousands of light years away, will have even more consistent motion.
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Hmmm, you probably could use an astrolabe to tell the time, but not without a lot of calculation between observation and "the time several hours ago was 13:46".
The British Navy paid people to solve this problem back in the 18th century. One strategy was yours (substituting sextants and octants for astrolabes, but they're all just angle-measuring devices) with thick tables of astronomical pred
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Here's hoping... (Score:5, Interesting)
... It turns out to be something other than a reflection from a terrestrial object. Even if it's not aliens, just some kind of celestial object that's beyond Earth orbit.
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My money is still on a kid with a laser pointer and an arduino laughing his ass off.
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They're not infallible protocols, but they dispose of the overwhelming majority of "that's weird
Alpha one reporting (Score:1)
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Over and out.
Just to nitpick: "over and out" they only say in really bad movies.
It is either "over": you expect the other side to answer and continue the conversation, or "out", which is "I hang up now".
Usually you give your call sign, e.g. "Angel out".
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Over and out.
Just to nitpick:
funny way to spell mansplain...on a sarcastic post,even!
The enormity of space (Score:2)
Recorded human history spans roughly 6,000 years.
That something whose light now reaching us originated 4,000 years ago could be described as being "really quite close to us" or "in our galactic backyard" simply boggles my mind.
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. . . if you consider 4,000 light years not much closer than 27,000.
Every 18 minutes? (Score:5, Funny)
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We're calling about your expired space vehicle warranty.
My guess... (Score:2)
A magnetaur, with a large, non-stellar object rotating around it. No, 18 min is not too short a time for an orbit.
The other option is that its poles are *not* aligned with galactic north/south, and it's rotating around its poles, as well as equatorially.
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No, 18 min is not too short a time for an orbit.
That depends on a lot of factors.
Given how massive a magnetar is, and using the Roche limit, an orbital period of 18 minutes is, as far as I could tell, way, way too short.
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Some alien... (Score:2)
Some alien teenager keeps putting his alarm clock on snooze, and just refuses to get up.
Like, let's make shit up (Score:2)
And it's really quite close to us... (Score:2)
I love the way Astronomers do that, "it's really quite close to us."
Yeah, like 4,000 light years - "mind blown gif" - I mean, with our current tech, it would only take us like 70 million years to travel that far.
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Don't wake me (Score:2)
Unless it's building a ring and turning people blue.
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Naw, I have my double tap all set.
Aliens (Score:2)
The signal has been decoded (Score:2)
Ralphie cracked it - "Be Sure To Drink Your Ovaltine"
Snooze (Score:2)
It's probably an astronaut's alarm clock on snooze..
Don't worry about it.
Watergate Object (Score:2)
If we could decode the 18 minute transmission, we would hear the missing tape fragments, and know about Nixon's planet of origin.
Lizard People are everywhere.
I thought this was settled (Score:2)
I for one welcome our (Score:1)
Octodecimal Overlords.
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Or should that be 0z1H ?
Beserkers, and we're Badlife. (Score:2)
The light flashes are sensors scanning us for meat content, so they know how big the tanks for protein need to be.
RTFA - that's A for Abstract, at least. (Score:2)
The high-frequency radio sky is bursting with synchrotron transients from massive stellar explosions and accretion events, but the low-frequency radio sky has, so far, been quiet beyond the Galactic pulsar population and the long-term scintillation of active galactic nuclei. The low-frequency band, however, is sensitive to exotic coherent and polarized radio-emission processes, such as electron-cyclotron maser emission from flaring M dwarfs, stellar magnetospheric plasma interactions
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Rest of the abstract :
At times, the pulses comprise short-duration (
Now I've got the PDF ... figure 1 helps clarify the time behaviour described in the abstract. Worth a look if you're confused.
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Third try : At times, the pulses comprise short-duration (LESSTHAN 0.5 s) bursts; at others, a smoother profile is observed. These profiles evolve on timescales of hours. By measuring the dispersion of the radio pulses with respect to frequency, we have localized the source to within our own Galaxy and suggest that it could be an ultra-long-period magnetar.