Series of signals from deep space have mathematical pattern.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: Scientists have been befuddled by a series of bizarre radio signals emanating from deep space since 2001, unable to determine what causes them and where they originated. Now, the enigma has become even more mysterious, as a new study indicates the “fast radio bursts” follow a distinct, mathematical pattern that researchers behind the paper say “is very hard to explain.”
“There is something really interesting we need to understand,” study co-author Michael Hippke, a scientist at the Institute for Data Analysis in Neukirchen-Vluyn, Germany, told New Scientist. “This will either be new physics, like a new kind of pulsar, or, in the end, if we can exclude everything else, an E.T.”
Aside from extraterrestrials, National Geographic lists theories describing the radio bursts’ origin that range from evaporating primordial black holes, to neutron stars colliding with interstellar comets, “to things that are much closer to home – but are just pretending to be really far away.” Per one proposal by New Scientist, it’s even possible an unmapped spy satellite is beaming signals that are masquerading as deep space emissions.
Astronomers won’t be able to decipher much about the radio bursts until they know the distance over which they’re travelling. They estimate bursts’ distance using something called a dispersion measure, which represents the time differential between the detection of a burst’s high frequencies and its low frequencies. Low frequencies travel more slowly through space dust, and thus take longer than high frequencies to reach Earth, according to HuffPost Science.
To their surprise, they deduced the dispersion measure of every pulse was a multiple of the number 187.5.
Such an even spacing “is likely not produced by something like a supernova explosion,” Hippke told HuffPost Science via email. “All frequencies leave the nova at the same time, and the [dispersion measure] is created by dust crossing. As the amount of dust varies, the [dispersion measure] would seem random.”
Hippke also said the pulses could be generated by some as-yet-unidentified source here on Earth that emits short-frequency radio waves followed by high-frequency ones — perhaps something as simple as a cell phone base station. If that’s not the explanation, it’s possible they come from a yet-to-be-discovered cosmic object in deep space — or aliens.
1 Comment
I’d hate to be in the alien’s place if we discover where they are located.