Posted on 08/30/2017 3:41:23 PM PDT by BenLurkin
A $100 million search for intelligent aliens has spied 15 bizarre, repeating flashes of light coming from a distant galaxy.
The galaxy a dwarf known as FRB 121102 that lies 3 billion light-years from Earth is a known source of such brief, high-energy fast radio bursts (FRBs). But the newly detected pulses stand out, astronomers said.
"Bursts from this source have never been seen at this high a frequency," Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement.
Some researchers think FRBs which were discovered in 2007 and remain mysterious today could be such alien signals. For example, astronomers have speculated that FRBs may be generated by powerful lasers designed to blast alien craft through space at high speeds a propulsion method akin to that being developed by Breakthrough Listen's ambitious sister project, Breakthrough Starshot. (Aliens aren't the only possible explanation, of course; some scientists think FRBs are likely emitted by fast-rotating neutron stars, for instance.)
So, FRB 121102 which, as its name suggests, was discovered on Nov. 2, 2012 was a natural target for the Breakthrough Listen team, researchers said. The scientists, led by Berkeley SETI Research Center postdoctoral researcher Vishal Gajjar, detected the 15 new pulses on Saturday (Aug. 26) using the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia.
"As well as confirming that the source is in a newly active state, the high resolution of the data obtained by the Listen instrument will allow measurement of the properties of these mysterious bursts at a higher precision than ever possible before," Gajjar said in the same statement.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Extraterrestrial swamp gas!
[ A $100 million search for intelligent aliens has spied 15 bizarre, repeating flashes of light coming from a distant galaxy. ]
Weather balloons crashing on Mac Brazel’s ranch again. Just farther away.
$6.66 million per flashing light.
Pretty good ROI. /sarc
I have a theory (probably not original) which I call the “independence Day” theory to explain why we have not discuvered alien life. There may be a hunter-type alien that just lurks until it picks up emissions that signal intelligent life. It then swarms the people who sent the signal and destroys them. If and when SETI discovers a more effective way to transmit intelligent signals, you KNOW that no one will have the discipline to NOT broadcast, even though it is likely that those receiving the signal are far more advanced than us. Alien life could sprout up all over the universe, but once they get to the point where they can broadcast in space, they get gobbled up.
light flashes ? ...dude...step away from the mushrooms
Brilliant men bumbling around the three billion year old dark of outer space.....
Meanwhile, research on diabetes, cancer aging illnesses and starvation are on the back burner.....
Put all space research onto the private sector (it will die), space flight in the military punch bowl and let origins be a philosophical discussion over folks favorite beverages....
So called “science” at work again. On the taxpayers dollar.
Your theory is probably valid. The issue for all space life theories is the distance between places and the time it would take to get from one place to the next.
Until you can bend space, it’s just yapping around the fire pit.
Hynek was pissed about that for the rest of his life. It was taken completely out of context.
Why wouldn’t they sterilize a planet before technology emerged?
Was the light coherent, or non-coherent? Because that obvious question was not addressed, the answer can only be that the light was non-coherent and not created by any ET.
Good thing we have Will Smith...
Some alien trying out his new LED flashlight.
After every other hypothesis had proven wrong, go to aliens, but that should be at the back of the queue.
On the taxpayers dollar.
I believe this effort is privately funded.
I think Global Warming has taught me all I need to know about taxpayer financed research.
It is a bad idea.
Tax dollars corrupts research. Such corrupted research corrupts the body politic.
They want to consume the life, but they need to find it. Their detection of space signals is far superior to ours, but they still can’t waste energy just hunting. A lot of animals are like that- they just sit still and wait for something to come by...
So, if it is 3 billion light years away and the 15 bizarre, repeating flashes of light, that means this is one of two things, either the light was signaled 3 billion years ago, for light travels at the speed of light,
OR, as I believe,
The Bible is true and this claim is BULL DUNG.
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