Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: PmbPhy on 19/01/2015 19:12:02
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I rarely talk about aliens because I've never come across information which I considered to be strong enough evidence of the existence of aliens ... until today. Someone showed me this website . I think it's worth a look:
http://www.hngn.com/articles/61574/20150119/alien-radio-burst-outside-milky-way-discovered-scientists-setting-trap.htm
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Hmmmn. I would be gobsmacked if there weren't any aliens. We surely cannot be the only inhabited planet containing semi-intelligent life. But when I read this:
"That means it could have given off as much energy in a few milliseconds as the Sun does in a day," said team member Daniele Malesani of the University of Copenhagen, according to the press release.
The real-time detection of the burst also left another clue - its polarization. The vibration from electromagnetic waves can be linear or circular. The radio burst caught by Petroff was more than 20 percent circularly polarized. That means there should be magnetic fields close to the source.
"We've set the trap," said Petroff. "Now we just have to wait for another burst to fall into it."
This sounds like matter falling into a black hole. Friedwardt Winterberg did a "firewall" paper about GRBs in 2001, and I think it's right. See the abstract here (http://www.znaturforsch.com/aa/v56a/56a0889.pdf).
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Without knowing more about the spectrum of the received radio pulse, it is hard to draw many hypotheses. I would agree with JohnDuffield that the extreme power (energy/time) and polarization hint at a natural star-scale phenomenon.
That said, if the spectrum doesn't fit well with any known natural phenomena, especially if it appears very "unnatural" I wouldn't rule aliens out either.
I think this is almost as compelling as the "wow!" signal ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal )--but with the advantage of having been observed (we think) on several occasions rather than one. Was there anything interesting about the intervals between the six putative radio bursts? (ie regular intervals or monotonic change?) How many are we likely to have missed in the intervening time?
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Here is another article on A real-time fast radio burst: polarization detection and multiwavelength (http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.0342), with the full text article available.
Is the calculated strength of the signal based on an omnidirectional signal at great distance? If it was some kind of a focused laser beam, then could the signal intensity be much less?
Doesn't our sun produce radio bursts in certain frequencies? Perhaps there is some relationship with the FRBs.
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I don't know about the rest of you but I want to say why I posted this. It's because of how odd it is and how off the mark astrophysicists find it to be. So off as for them to actually start thinking of the alien hypothesis. This is the first time I've seen anything like this in a very long time. I did not post this as if it was to be considered some sort of incontrovertible evidence of contact with aliens. So let's keep that straight, please?
It's best to keep in mind that the exact circumstances were such that astrophysicists, probably among the best in their field, had analyzed the data a great deal and considered a great deal of what they've observed compared to other similar situations and concluded that this is something of great interest. If it was simply a neutron star you have to think about why all the extra physical anomalies came with it.
I went to take another read but the website is offline when I wrote this post.
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Yes... perhaps the website will show back up sometime.
Looking up the Wow signal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal), it looks quite impressive when encoded, "6EQUJ5".
When decoded, it is a simple signal spike:
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2F1%2F15%2FWow_signal_profile.svg%2F629px-Wow_signal_profile.svg.png&hash=b92160f39992c6c4150babc0b1a10309)
Now, nearly all terrestrial radio communication is either Amplitude Modulated or Frequency Modulated. Perhaps the only "communication" that isn't is an old lighthouse (the new ones carry location plus information) with the old single sweeping beam light houses being largely replaced.
Anyway, there is nothing indicating that the WOW signal was carrying any information other than its source, and thus is likely created by some natural phenomenon.
Likewise, the FRB signals also appear to be single spikes, and not some modulated communication system. Strong, yes, but nothing unnatural.
So, any explanation of these short or long duration spikes need to look at natural phenomena.
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I don't know about the rest of you but I want to say why I posted this. It's because of how odd it is and how off the mark astrophysicists find it to be. So off as for them to actually start thinking of the alien hypothesis. This is the first time I've seen anything like this in a very long time. I did not post this as if it was to be considered some sort of incontrovertible evidence of contact with aliens. So let's keep that straight, please?
Don't sweat it. Most scientists take the view that there are aliens out there. If anything I'd say these guys floated out the alien thing in order to get some publicity.
Was there anything interesting about the intervals between the six putative radio bursts?
Reminds me of Shoemaker-Levy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Shoemaker%E2%80%93Levy_9). And that I ought to read the paper.