Weird Signals from Deep, Dark Space By Brian Simpson

     Is it possible that somewhere, anywhere in the universe, intelligent life exists? Intelligent life has not been discovered yet on Earth, so the hope is that somewhere out there, there may be something, or someone, who thinks:
  https://www.livescience.com/63254-mystery-frb-detected-canada.html?utm_source=ls-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20180806-ls

“Our universe is teeming with invisible light. Beyond the visible spectrum, space is a colorful mess of radio signals and microwaves fired off by flaring "suns," collapsing stars, crackling magnetic fields, roiling dust clouds and seething black holes. Then, there's the light nobody understands — mysterious, ultrastrong sparks of energy zipping billions of light-years across the universe from unknown origins, for unknown reasons. Puzzling pulses like these are sometimes called fast radio bursts (FRBs), because they may last just a few milliseconds. On the morning of July 25, one such burst of mysterious energy whizzed past a new array of radio telescopes nestled in the mountains of British Columbia, Canada, registering one of the rarest radio frequencies ever detected. According to a statement released in The Astronomer's Telegram (a bulletin board of astronomical observations posted by accredited scientists), the mystery signal — named FRB 180725A after the year, month and day it was detected — transmitted in frequencies as low as 580 megahertz, nearly 200 MHz lower than any other FRBs ever detected.

"These events have occurred during both the day and night, and their arrival times are not correlated with known on-site activities or other known sources," wrote Patrick Boyle, author of the Astronomer's Telegram report and a project manager for the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) — the radio telescope that detected the strange new signature. The pulse's fast, low frequency suggests that the blast was extremely bright and originated from an insanely powerful source somewhere in the cosmos. Studying the peculiar signal could give astronomers better clues as to how these extragalactic radio waves form and where they're coming. He added that an "artificial origin" of the signals (i.e., extraterrestrial intelligence) is worth considering. Other possible origins include supernovas (exploding stars), supermassive black holes or various other sources of mighty electromagnetic radiation, such as pulsars.

FRBs remain an utter mystery to astronomers and routinely draw the curiosity of alien hunters. The signals are, by nature, extremely brief and travel exceedingly far across space; pinpointing a precise source of such elusive pulses is no easy feat. On top of this, only about 40 or so FRBs have been detected on Earth since they were first discovered in 2007, so research on them remains sparse.”

     But, even if this signals originate from a super-advanced civilisation, the question remains: why would they have any interest in planet Earth? It has always seemed to me that Fermi’s paradox, of given the near-infinite (or infinite) universe, where are all the intelligent extraterrestrials, begs the very question of why in the world should they want to visit. Those people on the corner, who have horrible violent drunken  fights every night; do you want to visit them? Of course not:
  https://www.space.com/25325-fermi-paradox.html 
  http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1975QJRAS..16..128H 
  https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-fermi-paradox-is-not-fermi-s-and-it-is-not-a-paradox/ 
  https://www.space.com/25219-drake-equation.html 
  https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/08/06/scientists-spot-massive-rogue-planet-just-outside-solar-system/ 
  http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4365/aac2d5/meta

 

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Wednesday, 16 October 2024

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