Eric Mack
CNet, with videos
Wed, 30 Aug 2017 18:03 UTC

FRB 121102 originates from a distant dwarf galaxy.


The unexplained signals from the other side of the universe known as fast radio bursts are a rarely observed phenomenon and only one of them has been picked up more than once. Now scientists engaged in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence say that lone repeating fast radio burst (FRB) is being heard twittering away.

FRBs are bright, millisecond-long pulses of radio signals from beyond the Milky Way that were first identified only a decade ago. Suggested explanations include everything from neutron star outbursts to alien civilizations using some form of directed energy to propel a spacecraft.

One burst first observed in 2012, named FRB 121102, was later found to repeat in 2015. On Saturday, UC Berkeley postdoctoral researcher Dr. Vishal Gajjar used the Breakthrough Listen backend instrument at the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia to target FRB 121102 once again. After observing for five hours and across the entire 4 to 8 GHz frequency band, Gajjar and the Listen team analyzed the 400 terabytes of data gathered and found 15 new pulses from FRB 121102.


"The possible implications are two fold," Gajjar told me via email Tuesday. "This detection at such a high frequency helps us scrutinize many (of FRB 121102's) origin models. The frequency structure we see across our total band of 4 to 8 GHz also allows us to understand the intervening medium between us and the source."

The location of FRB 121102 has already been previously traced to a dwarf galaxy about 3 billion light years away, but what exactly might be sending out such strong signals from there remains a mystery. Gajjar says that the repeating nature and current state of heightened activity for FRB 121102 does seem to rule out some of the most destructive explanations, such as colliding black holes.

"As the source is going into another active state means that the origin models associated with some sort of cataclysmic events are less likely to be the case of FRB 121102," he said. "It should be noted that they can still be valid for other FRBs."

Whatever or whoever sent out the bright radio bursts, they left their source a very long time ago when the only life here on Earth was single-celled. Perhaps some ancient intelligent species was clued in to the emergence of life on our planet and knew that a signal sent would reach us just as we were becoming technologically sophisticated for the first time?

Perhaps, but given the current lack of evidence of such extra-terrestrial life, a natural phenomenon like a pulsar seems a more likely explanation.

The Breakthrough Listen team urged other astronomers to make follow-up observations of FRB 121102 during its current state of heightened activity in an Astronomer's Telegram post that first reported the new results on Monday. The researchers say the new bursts will be described in more detail in an upcoming paper for a scientific journal.

Interesting but lets not rule out pulsars.



Space is a really big place with lots of strange stuff in it. I think it is prudent to consider Occam's Razor when detecting signals in deep space. The most logical explanation is probably right.

Now, if the pulse is watched and it stops then starts again, we might have found something but only if it stops and starts in a random pattern that can't possibly be something moving (orbiting)in front of the source. Also to note that an increase or decrease in the speed of the pulse over time may be significant.

Even if it is determined to be of intelligent origin the fact that it is 3 billion light years away means we could never communicate with them and their civilization might have perished long ago. That pulse left its source just as life was emerging from the oceans here.

There would be some significance to the fact that intelligent life did occur at one time in the Universe. However, given the age, size and diversity of chaos in the Universe I don't need a FRB to tell me that. Logical deduction assures me.

What I want to see is a signal from this section of the Orion's Arm of the galaxy. Some intelligence we may have possible contact with, even if it takes the communication 50-1,000 years. That is a time frame that I think would be significant.

Remember, a signal from our closest stars, that are not the Sun, Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B and Proxima Centauri means the signal will take 4.22 to 4.3 years to get here and another 4+ years to get back, at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second).

even tho i personally don't believe the universe is 14 billion years old, but imagine how many civilizations could have lived and died before our solar system was even created...

I don't believe it is 13.7 billion years old either. Personally, I think it is much older.

I love science fiction that explores the "First Ones" civilizations.
Our star, the Sun, is a second generation star. At 4.5 billion years old there is plenty of time for a previous star to have lived and died before it. I often ponder if a civilization rose and fell with that previous star.

There are also a lot of brown dwarfs and red giants in our vicinity of the Orion's Arm. They didn't start out as brown dwarfs and red giants. How many of those stars hold planets that have remnants of long dead civilizations?

Its mind-boggling to think about it.

especially when we figure the numbers of stars we know of in the universe...billions of stars just in our galaxy, with billions of galaxies...makes it even more astounding

What blows my mind is the vast distances between object.
Even Mars and Venus are a honkinass ways off.
By comparison the Moon is as close as your chair.

Considering that it takes the Sun around 225,000,000 years to go around the center of the galaxy once and the Milky way is a small galaxy compared to many others, that's a long distance.

The Sun is 4,500,000,000 years old or so that makes the Sun around 20 years old. You couldn't walk to Mars or Venus in that amount of time. Its just mind-boggling the distances involved.

Hey, consider that 225,000,000 years ago there was a major extinction. What if the Sun is entering a deadly zone of the galaxy again? Someone might want to look into that. We're all gunna die!!!

This maybe? http://www.space.news/2015-10-06-entire-solar-system-is-heating-up-scientists-blame-solar-warming.html

Solar Warming?!!

The Sun is in main sequence.
Main sequence means it is heating up.
It has been heating up for a long time and will get hotter for a very long time.
Its about 4.5 billion years into its 10-11 billion year life cycle.
It hasn't even reached its maximum temperature yet.
So yeah, Its heating up and dirt is dirty, water is wet and Space dot com has been trying to sensationalize space stuff as click bait for a very long time.

Space dot news is about as accurate to science as CNN is to news.

it's not the sun that's causing it, but the the region of space we moved into... changes are happening on all the planets, not just earth...

Your source link says
entire-solar-system-is-heating-up-scientists-blame-solar-warming.html
I saw that and didn't click the link because I was thinking "duh".


Um... the planets are within the Sun's influence.
Space is cold, if anything the Solar System is heating space up because heat moves from warm to cold. Second law of thermodynamics and the basis for refrigeration and air conditioning.

Intergalactic space is colder than the objects within it. Space would not be heating anything because there is nothing there to have heat.

There are clouds of dust and gas that we could plow into tho. My inference was to those with speculation that some chemical may be adverse to life in a region of our Sun's orbit in the galaxy.
The Sun also moves up and down in relation to its galactic orbit.
Its possible the contaminate is only on one side of the parable arc at a certain point in position relative to our entire galactic orbit. Thus, we move into a contaminated zone and it affects life with an extinction event. The zone could also be stratospheric and occur with a multistage extinction over a relatively short(500,000 year) period.
To the fossil record it would appear as a single event but in actuality may be multiple events.

As for heat. Think motion.
The hotter something is the faster the atoms are moving. Absolute Zero is cessation of all atomic movement. It is frozen.

Every planet or body in motion has heat generation (radiation). Planets with their dynamic motions release heat. The Sun is not the only factor that keeps us warm. I'm pretty sure that even Pluto and Sedna have cores that are warmer than their surfaces. The pressures alone tell that.

I'm just sayin...not trying to be rude or anything. Its amazing how many people have no idea about how things really work.

yea,maybe...but i'm sure there are things out there we just don't know about yet... the sun isn't the only thing that gives off heat... the jets from black holes can travel 50,000 LYs, maybe there's things we just don't know or can see...


False-colour X-ray image of the giant elliptical active galaxy Centaurus A (NGC 5128) taken with the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory, featuring its 30,000 light-years long jet. Credit: NASA/SAO/R.Kraft et al.



Streaming out from the center of the galaxy M87 like a cosmic searchlight is one of nature's most amazing phenomena, a black-hole-powered jet of electrons and other sub-atomic particles traveling at nearly the speed of light. In this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image, the blue of the jet contrasts with the yellow glow from the combined light of billions of unseen stars and the yellow, point-like globular clusters that make up this galaxy. Lying at the center of M87 is a supermassive black hole, which has swallowed up a mass equivalent to 2 billion times the mass of our Sun. The jet originates in the disk of superheated gas swirling around this black hole and is propelled and concentrated by the intense, twisted magnetic fields trapped within this plasma. The light that we see (and the radio emission) is produced by electrons twisting along magnetic field lines in the jet, a process known as synchrotron radiation, which gives the jet its bluish tint. Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Oh I agree there are dangers. My issue was only with the URL assumption.

The thing about a Black Hole gamma particle jet being a life killer is that we look for Black Holes on a regular basis. I'm not saying we detect every one and gamma particles can occur over vast distances so it is possible, just not probable. Then again, there could be parts of this region of space that we can't detect till its too late.

Sagittarius B2 is a giant cloud hanging out in the Milky Way galaxy that smells a little bit like rum and tastes a little bit like raspberries. There could be other clouds that smell like arsenic and taste like cyanide (or worse). We may never detect trace gasses until we are already inside them. Who can tell what unknown particles are in our path that could be lethal in 1 part per million? Space is full of surprises.