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Extraterrestrial

Radio bursts 'may be powering alien ships'

By T.K. Randall
March 10, 2017 · Comment icon 22 comments

Are aliens producing these bursts ? Image Credit: Casey Reed - Penn State University
A new paper has suggested that we may have already found evidence of intelligent extraterrestrials.
It's a phenomenon that has managed to defy explanation for years - powerful bursts of radio waves originating from far beyond our own galaxy that, despite lasting mere milliseconds, generate as much energy as the Sun does in an entire day.

Several possible explanations for these strange bursts have been put forward over the last few years, but now two researchers from the US have published a new paper detailing the possibility that this mysterious phenomenon may actually be evidence of an advanced alien civilization.

They began by determining whether it would be possible to create a radio transmitter large enough to create bursts that can be detected in other galaxies. A solar-powered transmitter covering a region twice the size of the Earth, they argued, should be enough to do the job.
Assuming that a sufficiently advanced alien civilization would have the resources to construct such a structure however, what exactly would it be used for ?

According to the researchers, the most likely answer is that these powerful bursts could be used to propel payloads of up to a million tons from one star system to another using light sails.

"Science isn't a matter of belief, it's a matter of evidence," said co-author Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "Deciding what's likely ahead of time limits the possibilities."

"It's worth putting ideas out there and letting the data be the judge."

Source: Tech Radar | Comments (22)




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Recent comments on this story
Comment icon #13 Posted by lost_shaman 7 years ago
I don't think you read it correctly. It is a "fast" radio burst because they say it sweeps past us because of relative motion. My problem with all this is that if we are seeing these massively energetic flashes, then MOST of that energy MUST be missing those giant Sails the paper assumed!!! Just throwing that out there...
Comment icon #14 Posted by Astra. 7 years ago
Rather than this just being a very interesting theory....who knows.....maybe one day it might be proven as fact that there is an intelligent species of life out there (and possibly others) as far as these mysterious radio bursts are concerned. If anything... it's nice to imagine about the far reaching possibilities.
Comment icon #15 Posted by bison 7 years ago
It's been noted that a number of Fast Radio Bursts have dispersion measurement values that are various small integer multiples of the single value 187.5 cm -3/pc. Difficult to see how a natural phenomenon could cause such orderly results. The dispersion measurement is based on the way in which the bursts are affected by their travel through space. It is roughly correlated to the distance the energy has covered.  This seems to suggest the possibility that the sources of fast radio bursts could be arranged in an orderly pattern in space. 
Comment icon #16 Posted by Frank Merton 7 years ago
Difficult to see how something could be natural until someone figures it out.  I would recommend not holding my breath.
Comment icon #17 Posted by bison 7 years ago
Most natural phenomena, even if not fully understood, do not seem to partake of the artificial. I am willing to consider to any natural scenario that can explain the fact that 15 of the 20 sources of fast radio bursts rather closely adhere to 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 times the set value for dispersion mentioned above. As I am not confident that such an explanation is possible, I do not contemplate holding my breath, while awaiting it.  
Comment icon #18 Posted by MWoo7 7 years ago
eh it could happen but don't hold your breath surprised that docu kid hasn't piped in ?\ Are you serious , still allowing special kid clubs to comment? let alone be a mod?   oh irrelevant as he's not commented on this thread.
Comment icon #19 Posted by MWoo7 7 years ago
Time and distance make contact with alien civilizations highly unlikely. amazing
Comment icon #20 Posted by MWoo7 7 years ago
great but don't dig too deep into the butter -- tards
Comment icon #21 Posted by bison 7 years ago
Not knowing how distant, or how numerous extraterrestrial civilizations are, or how rapidly they can get from point A to point B, I couldn't say if this is so or not. In any case, this wouldn't prevent us receiving their radio emissions, even if these started their journey to us a billion years ago, provided they were strong enough, as the Fast Radio Bursts are.  
Comment icon #22 Posted by bison 7 years ago
The following is a list of Fast Radio Bursts, together with their dispersion measurements, as explained above, and numerical analyses of how these come near, or very near to being small integer multiples of the single dispersion value of 187.5 cm-3/pc. This latter is the most artificial-seeming aspect of the phenomenon. Name                  DM        multiple     accuracy  FRB 010125       790            4             .949 FRB 010621       745            4             1.006 FRB 010724       375             2             1.000 F... [More]


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