Is this ET? Mystery of strange radio bursts from space

So the energy in these "bursts" or transmissions is as much energy as the sun releases in a month..sounds like it's not any kind of satellite..if its a communication device that's a startling amount of power to harness.

a reply to: JadeStar

Um, actually we send short bursts all the time for things like radar mapping of planets or taking radar images of near Earth asteroids. We've used Earth's most powerful radio transmitter (Arecibo Planetary Radio) for just that purpose and those transmissions were/are powerful enough that if you were an alien on the other side of our Milky Way galaxy (65,000 light years away) and you had a dish the size of the 1000 meter Arecibo radio telescope with equipment no more sensitive than ours, you would be able to detect it in the frequency band 1-10 GHz.

Sorry, but I should think that the most probable "alien" signal would be one for communication, as opposed to radio tomography (your radar mapping). Though it is true that such a signal would be short, and, of greater power than a communication signal. But, the probability of receiving such a signal over a communication signal is rather low.

Then there is the question of the power output...here on earth, a radar signal is seldom over a few megawatts...issues with the output structures...

I could accept the notion of tomography, except for the seeming lack of regularity. Also, if doing "deep space" tomography like that...the initial signal would require a "signature" to distinguish the return from "natural" radio sources. I've not see anywhere where y'all talk about the signal's "unique signature". This signature would be bloody obvious!

My point is that such signals can not be use for communication, some sort of primitive attempt at tomography? Sure...

One other factor with the radio and space thing...the time required to the signal to travel from transmitter to receiver. In the case of your aliens on the other side of the galaxy; they will be waiting for 65,000 years for that signal to arrive.

So...I've not been working much with "radio" for a while; when did they develop the ability to receive sub pico-volt signals?

10's or 100's of nano volts I can see, but, a kilowatt traveling 65,000 light years is going to end up in the pico volt range or lower...and will be difficult at best even with a properly "chilled" front end.

a reply to: vonclod

The energy needed wouldn't be so enormous if the signal is coming from somewhere close.

originally posted by: tanka418
a reply to: JadeStar

Um, actually we send short bursts all the time for things like radar mapping of planets or taking radar images of near Earth asteroids. We've used Earth's most powerful radio transmitter (Arecibo Planetary Radio) for just that purpose and those transmissions were/are powerful enough that if you were an alien on the other side of our Milky Way galaxy (65,000 light years away) and you had a dish the size of the 1000 meter Arecibo radio telescope with equipment no more sensitive than ours, you would be able to detect it in the frequency band 1-10 GHz.

Sorry, but I should think that the most probable "alien" signal would be one for communication, as opposed to radio tomography (your radar mapping). Though it is true that such a signal would be short, and, of greater power than a communication signal. But, the probability of receiving such a signal over a communication signal is rather low.

Not necessarily.

Unless the communication was being beamed our way (which assumes aliens which want to contact us) then we would be more like to receive signals such as Arecibo's planetary radar because local communications such as our TV/radio leakage or even beamed communication within the alien solar system would probably would be lower in power.

And as we all know, low power signals don't travel as well as high powered ones through the interstellar medium.

originally posted by: tanka418
a reply to: JadeStar
One other factor with the radio and space thing...the time required to the signal to travel from transmitter to receiver. In the case of your aliens on the other side of the galaxy; they will be waiting for 65,000 years for that signal to arrive.

So...I've not been working much with "radio" for a while; when did they develop the ability to receive sub pico-volt signals?

10's or 100's of nano volts I can see, but, a kilowatt traveling 65,000 light years is going to end up in the pico volt range or lower...and will be difficult at best even with a properly "chilled" front end.

Integration time. This is why targeted searches focus on a star or region of space for a specific period of time. Weak signals are detectable through integration.

originally posted by: Thebel
a reply to: vonclod

The energy needed wouldn't be so enormous if the signal is coming from somewhere close.

But they've already ruled that out so they know the signals are extragalactic, not somewhere close.

Somewhere close would be somewhere within the plane of the Milky Way. These FRBs show no correlation with the plane of the Milky Way, hence, extra galactic.

originally posted by: JadeStar

originally posted by: tanka418
a reply to: JadeStar

Um, actually we send short bursts all the time for things like radar mapping of planets or taking radar images of near Earth asteroids. We've used Earth's most powerful radio transmitter (Arecibo Planetary Radio) for just that purpose and those transmissions were/are powerful enough that if you were an alien on the other side of our Milky Way galaxy (65,000 light years away) and you had a dish the size of the 1000 meter Arecibo radio telescope with equipment no more sensitive than ours, you would be able to detect it in the frequency band 1-10 GHz.

Sorry, but I should think that the most probable "alien" signal would be one for communication, as opposed to radio tomography (your radar mapping). Though it is true that such a signal would be short, and, of greater power than a communication signal. But, the probability of receiving such a signal over a communication signal is rather low.

Not necessarily.

Unless the communication was being beamed our way (which assumes aliens which want to contact us) then we would be more like to receive signals such as Arecibo's planetary radar because local communications such as our TV/radio leakage or even beamed communication within the alien solar system would probably would be lower in power.

And as we all know, low power signals don't travel as well as high powered ones through the interstellar medium.

Incorrect assumption in my opinion...a signal "beamed" toward Earth only means that a distant transmitter want to broadcast to a receiver in our direction, not necessarily broadcast to Earth.

Weak signals propagate exactly the same as strong ones...you know that whole inverse square thing...

originally posted by: JadeStar

originally posted by: tanka418
a reply to: JadeStar
One other factor with the radio and space thing...the time required to the signal to travel from transmitter to receiver. In the case of your aliens on the other side of the galaxy; they will be waiting for 65,000 years for that signal to arrive.

So...I've not been working much with "radio" for a while; when did they develop the ability to receive sub pico-volt signals?

10's or 100's of nano volts I can see, but, a kilowatt traveling 65,000 light years is going to end up in the pico volt range or lower...and will be difficult at best even with a properly "chilled" front end.

Integration time. This is why targeted searches focus on a star or region of space for a specific period of time. Weak signals are detectable through integration.

It seems that I have a wee issue with this method. Perhaps it is because when I receive a signal, I want to demodulate it, and extract any information impressed upon it. By doing an integration, something that must happen over time, I will destroy any modulation, and of course any data will be ancient history. Thus all that I am left with is a simple "burst" of RF, course I suppose I could so some sort of spectrum analysis, and determine the elemental (probable) of the transmitter. But, I most certainly won't be able to tell if it is natural or artificial...all of the important content should be too severely damaged.

Anyway, can you send a link, I'd like to learn more...

I doubt it's a alien message, however the weirdness is the 187.5 pattern.

I doubt that any advance race will use "radio transmissions" for communication. They might however able to receive them but I doubt they will do any attempts to "contact us".

Also Humans are starting to ditch the good old radio waves for laser based communication, e.g. LLCD - esc.gsfc.nasa.gov... - especially since we are demanding higher and higher speeds. The LLCD on the moon demonstrated that we already can transmit 600Mbit/s over a distance of 300k miles and the current record is held by MESSENGER which successfully communicated over a distance of 15 million miles in realtime.

It will take another 10 or 250years but eventually all our primary communication systems (especially in space) will be run by lasers... even locally (e.g. in our homes) we might change from Wi-Fi to Li-Fi ... look it up - it's real!

I was excited to read about this at first but then I read about how astronomers have been seeing the same super nova over and over again... I just wonder now if it's the same pulse as well.

Below, find a link to a recent article on the mysterious Fast Radio Bursts, from New Scientist magazine. They seem willing to leave the explanation of these radio bursts unresolved. They admit the possibility of an extraterrestrial intelligent source. They also assert that a natural, astrophysical cause is more likely.
How they were able to determine this is unclear. Knowing nothing of the presence, absence, abilities, or aspirations of any ETs, how can we know that their responsibility for the Fast Radio Bursts is any less likely than the workings of an astrophysical process, of which, they admit, we also know nothing.

www.newscientist.com/article/dn27287-alien-faq-6 questions-about-strange-cosmic-radio-bursts.html#.VSQvYBweQrg

originally posted by: Thebel
Folks, before you say anything, this is NOT April Fool's joke.

Is this ET? Mystery of strange radio bursts from space

Mysterious radio wave flashes from far outside the galaxy are proving tough for astronomers to explain. Is it pulsars? A spy satellite? Or an alien message?

BURSTS of radio waves flashing across the sky seem to follow a mathematical pattern. If the pattern is real, either some strange celestial physics is going on, or the bursts are artificial, produced by human – or alien – technology.

Telescopes have been picking up so-called fast radio bursts (FRBs) since 2001. They last just a few milliseconds and erupt with about as much energy as the sun releases in a month. Ten have been detected so far, most recently in 2014, when the Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia, caught a burst in action for the first time. The others were found by sifting through data after the bursts had arrived at Earth. No one knows what causes them, but the brevity of the bursts means their source has to be small – hundreds of kilometres across at most – so they can't be from ordinary stars. And they seem to come from far outside the galaxy.

The weird part is that they all fit a pattern that doesn't match what we know about cosmic physics.
NewScientist

So during the last 15 years, scientists have received 10 unexplainable pulses from the space. They only last for couple milliseconds and it spreads in multiple different frequencies. If that is not strange enough, every time there is time difference between lowest and highest band. Every time this time difference is the multiple of 187.5, every time. There is not a single known natural process that acts like this. If you think it's pure coincidence, think again, as the change for that is 5/10 000. There is high probability that it originates from Milky Way. It also could be signal from unknown satellite (Black Knight?). Pulsars could be another source, but this is unlikely, as they are not regular. One explanation would be also extraterrestrials.

But if they were extraterrestrials, this way of sending signals would not be the easiest. The problem would be generating enough energy for this wide-band transmission. Narrow band would be more efficient. If this signal comes from outside the Milky Way, it would need enormous amounts of energy. Even if it came from Milky Way, extraterrestrials would need to harness the energy of the star to produce enough energy. If you are familiar with Kardashev scale, this would mean Type II civilization.

Things have changed they think the signal is from us. Betting a satelite.
arxiv.org...

originally posted by: dragonridr
Things have changed they think the signal is from us. Betting a satelite.
arxiv.org...

That was a long quote.

If it's confirmed to be from Earth, that would be par for the course:

SETI

SETI Institute's Center for SETI Research (CSR) uses ATA in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, observing 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. From 2007-2015, ATA has identified hundreds of millions of technological signals. So far, all these signals have been assigned the status of noise or radio frequency interference because a) they appear to be generated by satellites or Earth-based transmitters, or b) they disappeared before the threshold time limit of ~1 hour.

I find it amusing that everyone jumps in to try and explain 187.5 with their knowledge and or experience. And all of these observations are assuming a base 10 mathematics system. Anyone know why we are base 10? So any who. What if this signal is extraterrestrial in nature (big if, probably earth reflected) and they had 3 fingers and a thumb. Their system would be base 8. 187.5 converted to base 8 is "3523". So what if we looked for stars that are 3523 light years from earth? A light year is a constant. What if it's base 6?

You get the gist. So ATS sleuth's, what can you find by thinking this way?

Since the real point was that the radio bursts were dispersed by multiples of 187.5 centimeters of wavelength, the fact that the figure is expressed in base ten is unimportant. The same ratios of the amount of dispersion would exist, no matter which base was used, or which units of measurement.
How a natural process could cause such regular steps in dispersion is not at all clear. It would seem more natural if the dispersions were of random amounts of wavelength. Combine that with the other highly unusual characteristics of the bursts, and something really impressive is being described.
The bandwidth of the bursts is extremely broad. There are a limited number of manmade signals that might explain them. This also assumes that these sorts of signals are even permitted on the frequencies to which the radio astronomers were listening. I will be looking into this aspect of the Fast Radio Bursts, and will report back with what I learn.

a reply to: Ross 54

You didn't read they were terrestrial in origin. Meaning from us.

I am familiar with the 2010 paper that was cited. This supposed determination that the fast Radio Bursts are definitely terrestrial in origin has not, in the intervening five years, settled the matter, as far as many scientists are concerned. In 2015 they are still considering an astrophysical cause. The more open-minded ones even leave open the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence.

a reply to: Thebel

Even if it came from Milky Way, extraterrestrials would need to harness the energy of the star to produce enough energy. If you are familiar with Kardashev scale, this would mean Type II civilization.

Since you mention a type II civilisation....

Perhaps there is a dyson sphere or series of spheres connected as a network surrounding energetic stars used as a power source that intentionally sends these radio bursts in omnidirectional format, as an organising signal...for activating or triggering the organisation of or reorganisation of precursor molecules to form into complex molecules...to trigger the evolution of life.

These might be the signature of a race of super sentient 'creators' or progenitors of life throughout the cosmos...it's no stranger than a God concept, and may even be the mechanism for the creation of all life.

I only say this, because you brought up the type II thing, so on your head be it!

originally posted by: tanka418

originally posted by: JadeStar

originally posted by: tanka418
a reply to: JadeStar

Um, actually we send short bursts all the time for things like radar mapping of planets or taking radar images of near Earth asteroids. We've used Earth's most powerful radio transmitter (Arecibo Planetary Radio) for just that purpose and those transmissions were/are powerful enough that if you were an alien on the other side of our Milky Way galaxy (65,000 light years away) and you had a dish the size of the 1000 meter Arecibo radio telescope with equipment no more sensitive than ours, you would be able to detect it in the frequency band 1-10 GHz.

Sorry, but I should think that the most probable "alien" signal would be one for communication, as opposed to radio tomography (your radar mapping). Though it is true that such a signal would be short, and, of greater power than a communication signal. But, the probability of receiving such a signal over a communication signal is rather low.

Not necessarily.

Unless the communication was being beamed our way (which assumes aliens which want to contact us) then we would be more like to receive signals such as Arecibo's planetary radar because local communications such as our TV/radio leakage or even beamed communication within the alien solar system would probably would be lower in power.

And as we all know, low power signals don't travel as well as high powered ones through the interstellar medium.

Incorrect assumption in my opinion...a signal "beamed" toward Earth only means that a distant transmitter want to broadcast to a receiver in our direction, not necessarily broadcast to Earth.

You are correct. But similar reasoning holds true. What are the chances we just happen to be lined up with the alien beam if it were not intended for us? See what I mean?


Weak signals propagate exactly the same as strong ones...you know that whole inverse square thing...


They do, but then there's that whole thing about weak signals also fading due to the scintillation of the interstellar medium. Radio astronomers, especially ones who do SETI always factor in ISM fading because its a significant factor at interstellar distances.

originally posted by: tanka418

originally posted by: JadeStar

originally posted by: tanka418
a reply to: JadeStar
One other factor with the radio and space thing...the time required to the signal to travel from transmitter to receiver. In the case of your aliens on the other side of the galaxy; they will be waiting for 65,000 years for that signal to arrive.

So...I've not been working much with "radio" for a while; when did they develop the ability to receive sub pico-volt signals?

10's or 100's of nano volts I can see, but, a kilowatt traveling 65,000 light years is going to end up in the pico volt range or lower...and will be difficult at best even with a properly "chilled" front end.

Integration time. This is why targeted searches focus on a star or region of space for a specific period of time. Weak signals are detectable through integration.

It seems that I have a wee issue with this method. Perhaps it is because when I receive a signal, I want to demodulate it, and extract any information impressed upon it. By doing an integration, something that must happen over time, I will destroy any modulation, and of course any data will be ancient history.

This is where most people go wrong in their understanding of SETI.

They're not trying to demodulate anything. They are not trying to decode anything. They are simply looking for artificiality and any signal with a bandwidth smaller than 1hz is not going to be natural in origin. Nature just does not produce anything that narrow.

So the integration time builds up weak signals so that really narrow, thin, artificial ones stand out from the background noise like you often see on an FFT waterfall plot like this one:



These usually turn out to be our own noise: terrestrial transmitters or satellite interference. And in some rare cases they look like they're "not local" but don't repeat.

In those cases, they're just waiting to reobserve the same signal from that location again.

If THAT happened, then THAT would be the major headline around the world and THEN the whole process of trying to decode it by perhaps building a larger radio telescope array to collect more characteristics of the weak signal in real time rather than through integration would happen.

Thus all that I am left with is a simple "burst" of RF, course I suppose I could so some sort of spectrum analysis, and determine the elemental (probable) of the transmitter. But, I most certainly won't be able to tell if it is natural or artificial...all of the important content should be too severely damaged.

Well you'd be right if nature produced lots of signals smaller than 1hz wide but that's not the case so anything that narrow even without any apparent information would be a "WOW" event.

SETI is not looking for a message. It's looking for spikes like this:

Anyway, can you send a link, I'd like to learn more...

Sure... A lot of good information in this link...

And in this one