(5) More Mysterious Extragalactic Signals Detected

Parkes Radio Telescope, Aus. detects five new, fast radio bursts emanating from beyond the Milky Way!
Including never-before-seen twin bursts originating from a 9 billion year old event!
Geez, isn't our universe simply incredible?
And we're all down here losing our minds over a man on a magazine cover...

Just in time for the holiday shopping season, astronomers snagged a two-for-one deal on mysterious blasts of radio waves from other galaxies. An unprecedented double burst recently showed up along with four more of these flashes, researchers report online November 25 at arXiv.org.

Fast radio bursts, first detected in 2007, are bright blasts of radio energy that last for just a few milliseconds and are never seen again (SN: 8/9/14, p. 22). Until now, astronomers had cataloged nine bursts that appeared to originate well outside the Milky Way. Yet, follow-up searches with nonradio telescopes for anything that might be pulsing or exploding keep coming up empty (SN Online: 12/8/14).

The five newcomers, detected at the Parkes radio telescope in Australia, follow the same pattern as all previous detected bursts with one exception — one flashed twice. Twin blasts separated by just 2.4 milliseconds came out of some sort of eruption that happened roughly 9 billion years ago in the constellation Octans, David Champion, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, and colleagues report.

A double flash rules out some ideas about what causes fast radio bursts. For instance, two neutron stars, dense cores left behind by dead massive stars, can collide only once. Rare vigorous blasts from pulsars might fit the bill, as would hyperflares from haphazard sources of gamma rays and X-rays known as “soft gamma repeaters,” possibly triggered by starquakes on highly magnetic neutron stars.

ScienceNews.com Source

This isn't the first time this telescope has detected such signals, either:

In 2001, the Parkes Radio Telescope picked up an extremely energetic burst of radio waves that lasted a mere five-thousandths of a second. Since then, astronomers have found several more so-called fast radio bursts, or FRBs, and even observed one of these pulses in real time last May. Based on these observations, the FRBs seem to be coming from more than 3 billion light years away, far beyond the Milky Way.

PopSci.com Source

Triple the distance, triple the intrigue! Space gets cooler every day!
As for what's causing these mysterious signals? Who knows. Here's an article discussing the possibilities:

IFL Science Link

A & E

a reply to: ADAMandEVIL

I wonder if anyone else outthere thought of the same idea as we did with sending out a signal trying to signify ourselves.

Our message should have included the information that those who govern us are corrupt crooks.

Also makes me think of "Contact"

a reply to: ADAMandEVIL

I wonder - annihilation events gives a double flash (two photons going out into opposite ways). If the first photon was to be reflected it would travel at the same direction as the second photon - and we would see two flashes... Now annihilation usually gives off x-rays, but if the annihilation event was located in an area with high gravitational field, it could redshift the frequency down to radio frequency...

Sorry, it's far-fetched, but it's the best I explanation I can think of which doesn't involves ETs.

BTW S&F for sharing!

Including never-before-seen twin bursts originating from a 9 billion year old event!

Could you imagine what a civilisation that was using radio waves 9 Billion years ago could be capable of now ?

Assuming this burst was from a civilisation and that that civilisation continued till now of course.

a reply to: swanne


Here's a recent article discussing just that- the possible origin of these bursts.
IFL Science link
Apparently, one of the more popular ideas was neutron star collisions, yet the new appearance of twin bursts 2.3 milliseconds apart rules that theory out.

a reply to: ADAMandEVIL

Wow, and I just had to type "radio signal from out space" in google and you know what, this ain't the first signal received that has baffled Scientists.

Are aliens trying to contact us? Mathematical radio waves from deep space baffle scientists

...For the last 15 years, scientists have been detecting strange radio bursts from deep space that appear mathematical in nature, reports New Scientist. The fact that they display a mathematical pattern is the linchpin: There are no known natural phenomenon capable of generating radio bursts with this kind of pattern.

And this pdf document titled "Signals from out of Space" from "www.nsa.gov", you folks really need to read this: Link to PDF file

A snippet from the pdf document.

Therefore, an assessment of the message content of Sputnik signals,
as equated to identifiable phenomena, must be held in abeyance. (At
the moment of writing we know no more as to the message content of
Sputnik signals than we did the first day they were identified as such.)
This statement is in no way intended to imply either that the correlation
is impossible or that such a correlation has not been effected.
What is implied is that the various postulated correlations, as found
in the open literature, cannot all be correct and must be treated as
conjectures until such time as the notebooks of the responsible U. S.
S. R. scientists are available, or until much more is known about outer
space conditions, either through the results of our own rocketry programs
or through more precise observations on the orbital behavior of
Sputniks and X-type satellites. Telemetry data from Explorer may
well be the key that will open up the message content of the Sputnik
signals.

ETA: This is really blowing my mind folks..all declassified documents relating to UFOs from National Security Agency archives...including information of ET Message (radio signals). Are we not seeing a form of disclosure now are we?

The list of declassified documents

a reply to: flice

I think the issue here is that these FRBs must be INCREDIBLY INTENSE! Think Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, soaked in nuclear material and in the middle of a fight/make up sex/fight/make up sex cycle, on a hurtling lump of the dying earth, heading into a black hole, while both of them are amped on performance enhancing steriods, HGH, and a cocktail of blood additives created by fermenting the vital fluids of the entire Avengers roll call of heroes through comic book history. That sort of intense.

To flash that briefly, but be THAT bright that they even register, there must be a FANTASTICAL amount of energy being expended, over a tiny fragment of time. I am talking about the entire net output of what, a Sun like star over some considerable period, condensed into a burst lasting a fraction of a second. We have not the technology to replicate that as far as I know, otherwise it would not be so damned mysterious that such a signal has been received. The scientists monitoring the situation would just say to themselves "Oh! Its one of THOSE signals, you know, those mundane and not at all shockingly powerful ones that we know how to send with our arm up our back and blindfolded! No worries, back to the barbecue lads!".

As it happens though, we cannot send anything of the sort, because of the massive energy requirements, not to mention the difficulty in directing power of that magnitude in such a way as to replicate the effect we see.

I realize these signals don't definitively prove advanced life, however, I still always find it so odd when a person claims to say "We have all these things pointing to the sky's, we have satellites up there, and we have shuttles leaving Earth, and we still have yet to find Alien Life". Then they basically put their foot down and declare there isn't life out there.

You know, as if less than 100 years is far more than enough time of us searching space for life to say "well, we've looked out the front door, didn't see anything, therefore there is nothing"

Sure, these signals don't show that we've found advanced life. I agree.

They do, however, show a glimpse at how little we have discovered.

a reply to: flice

How "corrupt" do you think "out there" beings might be?

I hope they are friendlies.

originally posted by: ADAMandEVIL
The five newcomers, detected at the Parkes radio telescope in Australia, follow the same pattern as all previous detected bursts with one exception — one flashed twice.

Maybe the two flashes was Morse meaning, I. God has spoken, his bosun is the....accelerating with the universe...Higgs boson gaining mass! You have been warned.

a reply to: InnerPeace2012

Excellent digging, star for you!
There is most definitely something of great interest behind whatever is causing these anomalies.
Remember the Aricebo response?
Aricebo Response
Alien or cosmic in nature, either way this is some fascinating stuff.
Thanks for adding.

a reply to: Ghost147

Exactly. Though hoaxes and false evidence abound, there is no denying the multitudinous verifiable, credible and multiple-witness accounts of sightings/experiences.
Far too much to dismiss the phenomenon as thoroughly as it has been thus far.
Check out the links InnerPeace2012 provided above- there may be something intelligent behind these cosmic bursts after all...

a reply to: TrueBrit

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, soaked in nuclear material and in the middle of a fight/make up sex/

What ever you had to say after this just never made it into my brain.....
What WAS this thread about???? Who cares anymore. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, soaked in nuclear material and in the middle of a fight/make up sex/

This is only at Parkes?

Maybe they have something bad in their equipment?

originally posted by: ken10

Including never-before-seen twin bursts originating from a 9 billion year old event!

Could you imagine what a civilisation that was using radio waves 9 Billion years ago could be capable of now ?

Assuming this burst was from a civilisation and that that civilisation continued till now of course.

Probably the ability to get here in person before the radio waves.

It's the wow ,wow ,wow,wow and wow signal ,that's not that wow anymore today..

a reply to: gspat

Interesting you'd bring that up- this article was put out about this very station:
Gizmos Link
These ones are already confirmed, but there have been instances in the past where interference (bird poo in another case) causes errors. Good call!

As for it being only Parkes making the recording, they're likely the only one looking at that particular piece of sky.
It's a big @$$ sky, and there's not much relative funding in monitoring programs.

I'm in zoology, not physics, but isn't a double flash event most commonly associated with nuclear detonation?

Although, there's also the Vela incident, a double flash event occurring in Antarctica in the late 1970's. Lots of people believe that it was a covered-up nuclear test, but independent investigators have found no evidence of a nuclear detonation (assuming that they weren't made to say so). Either way, the actual cause remains classified, which is unfortunate, because if it was caused by something other than a nuclear blast, that information could really help us out in deciphering these strange signals coming all the way from the early days of the universe.

Naturally, there will be people wondering if it could have been transmitted by extraterrestrials. That would be cool I gotta admit. But these signals are from around 9 billion years ago. It's actually kinda depressing to think that somewhere out there, long before our time, an alien race was trying to find others, hoping that they weren't alone in the universe. But they never found anyone, because they were too early. If we were to contact aliens, not only would they have to be in a form we are able to communicate with (rather than hyper intelligent shades of blue which communicate in heat waves), but their time line would also have to coincide with ours.

a reply to: ADAMandEVIL

Mama's pressure cooker blowing up again.

a reply to: ADAMandEVIL

Just a thought on the Aricebo response. It might be stranger than you think. In 1999 there was a transmission to the stars called the Cosmic Call. Link.

Looking at what they did at the time I realized something funny. They were blasting a 150kw radio signal directly into the northern sky for several months. And during that time there was the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, and a couple of comets in the direct line of site to this transmitter. So I would point out this. The Aricebo response may really be the Cosmic Call response.

And the responders, if they were aliens, may actually be in this solar system. : )

a reply to: ntech

I cannot help but think that maybe the radio flashes we are seeing are perhaps reflections of our own signals to the stars. Maybe a nearby large body, such as a nebula, is acting like a funhouse mirror, reflecting our own message back to us but in a distorted manner.

Following that line of thought: if the Cosmic Call was sent in 1999, and if we are receiving back the reflection now, and since radio waves travel 1 light-year per year, then this would place the reflecting body at some 8 light-years from the Sun, in the general direction of the Swan constellation.