Astronomers find mysterious radio burst

SOURCE

A new and intense type of radio burst has been discovered in archived views of the cosmos, astronomers revealed today.

The single, short-lived blast of radio waves likely occurred some 3 billion light-years from Earth, and it may signal a cosmic car crash of two neutron stars, the death throes of a black hole — or something else.

"This is something that's completely unprecedented," said Duncan Lorimer, an astrophysicist at West Virginia University in Morgantown and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory who led the discovery-making team. He noted that radio-emitting pulsars send out similar emissions, but repeat them every few hours."We're confused and excited, but it could open up a whole new research field," Lorimer told SPACE.com of the 5-millisecond blip on the cosmic radar screen. "If we really go after these things, we expect to find out that a couple hundred of them occur each day."

The discovery is detailed in the Sept. 27 issue of the online journal Science Express.

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I just got done reading about this myself. I found it extremely interesting.

I'm surprise no one is really talking about this. I’m just wondering why there not even considering aliens of some sort that possibly sent a message.

Or is it the wrong type of signal. I don’t know.

I heard the NPR story. I think it's either a false reading or a hoax. First off, it was pointed out to a professor by his undergrad who was examining some old data, the undergrad could have just faked the data. After all, there was no independent confirmation by any other radio telescope.

If the burst IS genuine, I don't think it's from our friends up above. I didn't hear anything to indicate that there was some kind of intelligent pattern to the burst, and it would take one HELL of a transmitter to broadcast something like that. AFAIK, not even blazars are that strong.

This signal is over a broad radio spectrum, so probably not of intelligent origin. However a very interesting find. This shows how far science is behind on analyzing data. Billions of bits of data and very few scientists to review them.

Originally posted by TheHorseChestnut
This signal is over a broad radio spectrum, so probably not of intelligent origin. However a very interesting find. This shows how far science is behind on analyzing data. Billions of bits of data and very few scientists to review them.

Indeed. One would expect a transmission in the Hydrogen waveband. Still, an interesting find, none the less!

Heres a link to another article on it.

Scientists discover deep space signal

The huge burst of energy, which has startled scientists with its strength, is thought to have originated over 500 mega-parsecs or one-and-a-half billion light years from earth

"The burst may have been produced by an exotic event such as the collision of two neutron stars or be the last gasp of a black hole as it evaporates completely," he said

This apparently happened over 6 years ago but was "dismissed as man made interference".
Makes you wonder what other information that has been collected over the years has been "dismissed as man made interference".
The heading of the article probably should read "Scientists re-discover deep space signal".
Still a pretty cool find, hard to even imagine 2 stars colliding and the sort of energy such a collision would release.
Even more interesting is the final death throes of a Black Hole, why would that release such a huge amount of energy?

Good find Arawn.

Cheers mojo.