[guest47899]

Is it possible that deep space repeating radio burst are merely a single occurrence radio burst that has been broken into multiple radio burst fragments? I.e  a analogy would be a bad ip packet, broken during transmission.

[yor_on]

Do you have examples?
And reasons to why they might be broken?

That would help immensely

[evan_au]

Do you have examples?

Perhaps like this one (FRB 180814.J0422+73 - 6 bursts detected from a single source), detected by the CHIME radiotelescope in Canada:
See: https://gizmodo.com/astronomers-just-detected-a-mysterious-repeating-cosmic-1831605803

And reasons to why they might be broken?

Without having read the original paper, there are mechanisms that allows light (including radio waves) to reach Earth via multiple paths

One such mechanism is gravitational lensing, where a closer cluster of galaxies bends the light from a distant object.
- Depending on the exact path through the galactic cluster, the waves can reach us via multiple paths
- These paths may be slightly different lengths, which means that signals from the same source will reach us at slightly different times.
- Where "slightly" is used in astronomical terms, which may be 10,000 or more years apart.

Whether this speculation has any weight, could be determined by looking at the 6 bursts discovered to date, and seeing if they have roughly the same characteristics (ie distorted echoes of a single event), or perhaps they look quite different (suggesting 6 different events from the same source).

[chris]

We looked at repeating fast radio bursts on the programme this week; astrophysicist Fran Day looked at the latest papers for us:

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/interviews/mysterious-radio-signals-space

[evan_au]

The CHIME website can be found on the following link, with pointers to a number of their papers:
https://chime-experiment.ca/publications

[yor_on]

Ok, thanks Evan.
But reading Chris it seems like you have to have a very advanced civilization to be able to manipulate those signals.

I think a good question would be to what we we would choose if we wanted to do the same

[evan_au]

you have to have a very advanced civilization to be able to manipulate those signals

The source of energies involved in Fast Radio Bursts are unclear, and are the subject of a number of theories by astronomers.
- What seems clear is that the source outshines a whole galaxy for a millisecond or so
- This is how we can detect them at a range of a billion light years or more
- Candidates include extreme events like dropping a neutron star into a black hole
- Since it is unlikely that you would have a queue of neutron stars lining up near a black hole, the source of repeated FRBs is even more of a mystery!
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_radio_burst#Origin_hypotheses

Any hypothetical aliens intentionally generating these events would have to be at least Level II on the Kardashev scale, since they are manipulating the energy of multiple stars.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

...but it is wise to rule out natural sources before we use the "A" word!

The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.