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Breakthrough Listen, an initiative to find signs of intelligent life in the universe, has detected 15 brief but powerful radio pulses emanating from a mysterious and repeating source – FRB 121102 – far across the universe.
Possible explanations for the repeating bursts range from outbursts from rotating neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields – so-called magnetars – to a more speculative idea: They are directed energy sources, powerful laser bursts used by extraterrestrial civilizations to power spacecraft, akin to Breakthrough Starshot's plan to use powerful laser pulses to propel nano-spacecraft to Earth's nearest star, Proxima Centauri.
"Bursts from this source have never been seen at this high a frequency," said Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center and of the Breakthrough Listen program. Read more at: phys.org...
why don't they send data encoded in the FRB
originally posted by: myselfaswell
What are the chances of 15 300 microsecond pulses ?
Regardless of FRB 121102's ultimate source, when the recently detected pulses left their host galaxy, our solar system was less than 2 billion years old, noted Steve Croft, a Breakthrough Listen astronomer at UC Berkeley. Life on Earth consisted only of single-celled organisms; it would be another billion years before even the simplest multi-cellular life began to evolve. Read more at: phys.org...
originally posted by: SolAquarius
The signal has got to be more then 2 million years old. Since the nearest neighboring galaxy andromeda is 2 million light years away.
So if it's ET's they are either long dead or several million years more advanced then when they originally sent the signal.
originally posted by: Boscov
a reply to: JDeLattre89
Ooooh, I like that postulation! Stars are like nerve cells, firing data, and the whole Galaxy becomes aware...then the Universe becomes conscious and reacts...yes, that's good.
originally posted by: starwarsisreal
a reply to: myselfaswell
Maybe it's the real Star Wars Galaxy since it's "a galaxy far far away" and George Lucas' original home.