Posted on 06/28/2016 6:06:48 PM PDT by MtnClimber
No astronomer had ever seen anything like it. No theorist had predicted it. Yet there it was — a 5-millisecond radio burst that had arrived on 24 August 2001 from an unknown source seemingly billions of light years away.
“It was so bright, we couldn't just dismiss it,” says Duncan Lorimer, who co-discovered the signal1 in 2007 while working on archived data from the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia. “But we didn't really know what to do with it.”
Such fleeting radio bursts usually came from pulsars — furiously rotating neutron stars whose radiation sweeps by Earth with the regularity of a lighthouse beam. But Lorimer, an astrophysicist at West Virginia University in Morgantown, saw this object erupt only once, and with more power than any known pulsar.
He began to realize the significance of the discovery1 only after carefully going over the data with his former adviser, Matthew Bailes, an astrophysicist at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. If the source was really as far away as it seemed, it had released the energy of 500 million Suns in just a few milliseconds. “We became convinced it was something quite remarkable,” he says.
But when no more bursts appeared, initial excitement turned to doubt........
Whatever these objects are, recent observations suggest that they are common, with one flashing in the sky as often as every 10 seconds2. Yet they still defy explanation. Theorists have proposed sources such as evaporating black holes, colliding neutron stars and enormous magnetic eruptions. But even the best model fails to account for all the observations, says Edo Berger, an astronomer at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who describes the situation as “a lot of swirling confusion”.
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
Very, very interesting article with lots of background information.
Interesting, but way above my head. All I can say is once again the more we know, the more we realize we don’t know.
I agree, we don’t know much and we are trapped on a small planet in a small galexy.
I think this was probably the radio waves given off by some object in our atmosphere. Maybe a satellite.
That is my theory anyway.
Unscientific though it is.
Echoes of the Big Bang.
WGOD radio....bringing you the hits that matter the most. Here’s ABBA!
“Less than Zero?”
“Stop”
“I’m sorry ladies and gentleman, there’s no reason to do this song hear”
“Radio Radio”
I was tuning in the shine on the light night dial
doing anything my radio advised
with every one of those late night stations
playing songs bringing tears to me eyes
I was seriously thinking about hiding the receiver
when the switch broke ‘cause it’s old
They’re saying things that I can hardly believe.
They really think we’re getting out of control.
[Chorus:]
Radio is a sound salvation
Radio is cleaning up the nation
They say you better listen to the voice of reason
But they don’t give you any choice
‘cause they think that it’s treason.
So you had better do as you are told.
You better listen to the radio.
I wanna bite the hand that feeds me.
I wanna bite that hand so badly.
I want to make them wish they’d never seen me.
Some of my friends sit around every evening
and they worry about the times ahead
But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference
and the promise of an early bed
You either shut up or get cut up;
they don’t wanna hear about it.
It’s only inches on the reel-to-reel.
And the radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools
tryin’ to anaesthetise the way that you feel
You really need to get together with Walter.
Yollopoliuhqui
He’s all over this whole “Electric universe” thing.
Maybe you all ready know him?
He’s an actual Scientist.
I may give the whole “Electric Universe Theory” more consideration if it wasn’t for their proponents tendencies to incorporate “Conspiracy theories” as part of their pitch.
But that’s just me.
It’s just the exhaust from nearby generation ships.
Coincidence?
I think not!
(Cue the guy from Ancient Aliens)
It’s worth your time to take it seriously. Electric Universe theories are fascinating and offer a much more coherent view of the universe than the mess of mysticism the gravity-dominated worldview has devolved into.
Don’t get me wrong.
I think there is a lot to be explored regarding the Electric Universe.
What turns me off is when virtually all of the proponents for the “Electric Universe” find it necessary to invoke some grand “Conspiracy”.
Conspiracies that have nothing to do with the “Electric Universe Theory”.
Do you know Walter?
Walter is our resident Freeper that inserts some retarded conspiracy video link whenever he senses the opportunity.
6EQUJ5!
You should ignore the conspiracy parts and focus on the science, which is very meaty and provides a LOT to think about.
Just on an Occam’s Razor basis, it is very compelling. Gravity-driven astrophysics has had to propose an ever-increasing number of unfalsifiable hypotheses, physical absurdities, and acts of God to keep it glued together. “Dark matter/energy” is at its core a measure of how wrong the prevailing theories are, which by their own numbers says 96% of what we can see in the universe they have absolutely no idea what is going on.
Electromagnetism provides an excellent alternative to the mysticism of Big Bang, black holes, neutron stars, dark matter, gravitational waves, string theory, and “spacetime” (among others).
For example, the strobe light circuit model is a far far simpler explanation and makes a lot more sense than a star composed of solid neutrons rotating so fast that points on its surface move at relativist speeds - no need to propose the existence of fantastic things like pulsars when much more mundane explanations are available simply by recognizing that electricity may be the cause of the effects we observe.
If you dig into it there are a lot of very intriguing theories in the Electric Universe model.
I agree, and have looked into a boat load of the science.
But, do you admit that there is a lot of “Conspiracy” crap that is associated with those that are trying to advance this theory?
There is some of that, but that is natural whenever you’re dealing with something that is outside of the mainstream. Don’t let that distract you from the good stuff.
Geez, it was just me keying up my Alpha 9500 at 2.5kw into my Mosley TA-33. WTF, these guys don't know how to triangulate?
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