Mysterious radio waves emitted from nearby galaxy

I know they are saying that this signal is unrelated to a stellarburst that they were looking at but, do they mean TOTALLY unrelated, since they might expect some sort of radio signal from a stellarburst in itself. The article doesn't say the kind of radio signal they might of had from the stellarburst, or how long that may have lasted. What they do say is that it appears to be two events, they don't say if the signal emerged while they were looking at the stellarburst, or if it was already present, and they just came upon it.
edit to add, read the article again and I see they say it appeared while they were monitoring the stellarburst, although they don't say how long they had been monitoring the stellarburst. It would be interesting to know the different timescales.



[edit on 14-4-2010 by smurfy]

Not trying to ruin anyones fun.. but I seriously doubt its aliens. Obviously its not impossible, but (and someone feel free to correct me if Im wrong (oh and Im not saying life only ever forms in one particular way)) it would be slightly difficult for life to form there.
Reason Im thinking this is because the article says 'It is not quite in the middle of M82', which I take to mean that its sort of close to the centre. Life would be pretty much screwed if it were near the centre of our own galaxy due to starbursts, radiation and all that other fun, life ending stuff.. and M82 is apparantly a 'starburst galaxy'... so even if life got started, it would probably end up being wiped out before anything evolved enough to start whacking out the warp drives & whatever else.

But yea, its not impossible.. but it seems like starburst galaxies would be pretty violent places to live so I would lean more towards it being a natural event that we've never seen before.
Although if it is aliens it'd be interesting to see what they'd look like evolving from such different conditions to us.

[edit on 14/4/10 by Bluebelle]

reply to post by eightfold


No eightfold, the article clearly explains why its apparent speed is ftl. These are expected illusions that we get from something traveling close to light speed, so that's that.

What scientists can't figure out is what is causing them. If anyone is putting words in that article, is perhaps yourself:

They then go on to say that's it's not likely to be a black hole, so the relativistic effects seen before likely don't apply to this new observation.

Yup, the article doesn't say anything like that. Hey, at least you did point out my biggest problem, that is attitude. Call me obnoxious, but I certainly drew more attention than the guy who tried to correct everyone else in the very first page - note the only star he had when I made my first post was mine vs 5 stars from the guy that said this was a perfect example that the current model was wrong.


[edit on 14-4-2010 by daniel_g]

There are dozens of theories for traveling faster than light.

However, almost every time someone claims that they have done it, it ends up being inconclusive.

Five important points.

#1) We will never know for sure what it is.


#2) We cannot go there to find out up close.


#3) Our technology cannot see close up either.


#4) You would need a ultra advanced spaceship with time travel capabilities. Because this event happened millions of years ago, as the light is just now reaching us, and so you would have to go way way back.

#5) Our lifetimes are too short to have any impact.


There fore my conclusion is thusly:

We should spend more time trying to figure out how to solve world Hunger and Disease instead of pondering the unknowables of the unknown.

Priorities Priorities!

My fellow philosophers and scientists, I beg your pardon, but you are Wasting your Time while people are dying around you!

Now, how are we going to desalinize and purify seawater for 6 billion humans on Earth? Hmmmm

[edit on 14-4-2010 by muzzleflash]

Originally posted by die_another_day
There are dozens of theories for traveling faster than light.

However, almost every time someone claims that they have done it, it ends up being inconclusive.

When it happens you will know.

They will just disappear.

And then reappear with a handful of Martian rocks a moment later as proof.

Originally posted by daniel_g
reply to post by eightfold

 

No eightfold, the article clearly explains why its apparent speed is ftl. These are expected illusions that we get from something traveling close to light speed, so that's that.

No it doesn't, it offers a plausible possibility based on what's been observed before.

Apparent FTL movement has only been seen in relativistic jets ejected from accretion disks around massive black hole systems. So far as they can tell at the minute this is not a massive black hole system or a microquasar (or any other classification that we have), so they can't say why it's apparently traveling at FTL speeds. Once/if it becomes clear what it is they can begin to explain why it's doing what it's doing.

What scientists can't figure out is what is causing them. If anyone is putting words in that article, is perhaps yourself:

They then go on to say that's it's not likely to be a black hole, so the relativistic effects seen before likely don't apply to this new observation.

Yup, the article doesn't say anything like that.

Well it does... it says it's not likely to be a black hole, so, logically, the apparent FTL speed can't be explained... FTL movement has only previously been observed around x-ray binaries and massive black hole systems, and this appears to be neither as it stands at the minute.

It's very simple - you're making an assumption the relativistic effects of black hole systems apply here, but none of the scientists are saying that.

Hey, at least you did point out my biggest problem, that is attitude.

They do say the first step is to admit you have a problem...

Without doubt, IF all scientific explanations are exhausted, then they will have to go down the road of trying to explain what else it might be. And given the nature of it - its speed, its emitting radio waves at a constant rate - the most logical explanation is perhaps the most incredible. Advanced alien civilisation.

Let's face it, if we are going to find something, we would most likely find it in the next 25 years - so this might just be what we were looking for. I hope so.

As to what it is? Anyone's guess. Could be a 'wooh, look what we can do with a big explosion and ejected radio transmitter going 4x FTL'. Could be 'crap our star just died, someone come help us quick'. Could be a giant extraterrestrial insurance ad 'do you ever worry about losing one of your telepathic eye stalks? Well, you're not alone..' Could be a 'this is what we just did to this civilisation, yours soon...'

Fascinating! When do we get to here more about this? Anyone know?

Originally posted by the.lights

Fascinating! When do we get to here more about this? Anyone know?

In roughly 4 million years when humans boldly go there.

Or never, if we become extinct first.

But something like this you seriously need more detailed instrument readings. This event may be over by the time we develop those capabilities. That's why I said Never...

So if the Universe is billions of years old how did God he create everything in 6 days? Since we are just babies when it comes to science don't knock creation just yet.

No I don't want a big God vs Science debate, a stand alone comment, carry on...

[edit on 14-4-2010 by The time lord]

Originally posted by muzzleflash

Originally posted by the.lights

Fascinating! When do we get to here more about this? Anyone know?

In roughly 4 million years when humans boldly go there.

Or never, if we become extinct first.

But something like this you seriously need more detailed instrument readings. This event may be over by the time we develop those capabilities. That's why I said Never...

Really.. if it is an alien transmission, then it's quite possible it could be decoded. Without doubt, they would be intelligent enough to use the universal language of mathematics. Then, I would imagine it ought to be fairly straightforward for us to be able to, or at least try, decode it.

The signal is there right now. Unless it switches off or stops, and it is alien, then we have plenty of time to get to work on it. Age and distance have nothing to do with the here and now. If we detect a signal - be it 5 years old or 50 million - then we can try to decode it.

For all we know, this could be an encyclopedia galactica for an alien race.

A slight correction, nothing can ACCELERATE beyond the speed of light. Objects that may have been born moving faster than that velocity are, of course, not subject to the law.

Originally posted by ALOSTSOUL
Wow very intresting. They say the objects moving four times the speed of light..............I thought nothing could travel faster than the speed of light

Sure, things can surpass the speed of light.

Look at nuclear reactors. That blue glow in the water-filled core is known as Cherenkov radiation. It occurs when charged particles travel through a medium (such as water) faster than the speed of light.

www.britannica.com...

The only reason I knew that off the top of my head was because at one point I was fascinated with studying the Chernobyl disaster online and all about nuclear reactor types.

Originally posted by eightfold
No it doesn't, it offers a plausible possibility based on what's been observed before.

Apparent FTL movement has only been seen in relativistic jets ejected from accretion disks around massive black hole systems.

Really? So the moon's apparent velocity is not 1 million km/s when you spin around looking up at the sky?

They then go on to say that's it's not likely to be a black hole, so the relativistic effects seen before likely don't apply to this new observation.

Yup, the article doesn't say anything like that.

Well it does... it says it's not likely to be a black hole, so, logically, the apparent FTL speed can't be explained.

Yes, it does say its not likely to be a blackhole, but that's not the part I placed under the bold tags. It does not matter if it comes from a blackhole, a whitehole, or the edge of the universe, if it's moving at relativistic speeds it's going to have relativistic effects - that unless relativity is wrong but then there would be no point in even mentioning the word relativity.


[edit on 14-4-2010 by daniel_g]

Maybe we should try comparing radio frequencies? Can we track and anazlyze our own radio waves of non-natural means coming from our own planet? If so I recommend they try and compare to see if it shares similarities to our artificial radio waves, that should give us the answer of whether it is intelligent life or not.

Interesting thread. Perhaps we are looking at the back side of a black hole?

It seems to be incresing in size - so does that mean it's plain just growing in size, or is heading towards us. Why didn't the scientists mention a trajectory? Surely that would be obvious to work out?

So if the Universe is billions of years old how did God he create everything in 6 days? Since we are just babies when it comes to science don't knock creation just yet.

No I don't want a big God vs Science debate, a stand alone comment, carry on...

[edit on 14-4-2010 by The time lord]


Time Lord maybe God dreamed everything all at once in the 1st Universe then made time in order to decipher the dream that he dreamed by inposeing himself in time and trying to imagine what he did in order to create his own place in the higher dimensions. If I was God I would want to forget in order to chill in a place that gets so much praise, maybe we humans will find God in a human body one day but if we do it may piss him off but prolly not because we would have seen it in the first dreaming of the Universe.

I think the Universe already happened because there are higher dimensions and time is not all incompusing of all the dimensions.

Who knows maybe God dreamed up the Universe while chilling in our Universe during our time in order to get a surprise via no memory of even being God.

I say this only because once 5D comes into play then anything ever imagined is possible and... idk makes no places that could not be.

Just typeing for the heck of it.

Originally posted by Korg Trinity

Originally posted by MysterE

Yet it does seem to be moving – and fast: its apparent sideways velocity is four times the speed of light

But what could this be?

That is a perfect example of how the Standard model is totally wrong.

In the standard model as is known by many no matter could travel faster than the speed of light, but it is possible for radio waves to travel faster than light.


Korg.

This has not been falsified. All the supposed superluminal things we've seen pop up recently are only exceeding c in their group velocity. The rate at which information is traveling is still below c.

So. . . .Don't perpetuate falsehoods like that.

The group velocity of a wave (e.g. a light beam) may also exceed c in some circumstances. In such cases, which typically at the same time involve rapid attenuation of the intensity, the maximum of the envelope of a pulse may travel with a velocity above c. However, even this situation does not imply the propagation of signals with a velocity above c, even though one may be tempted to associate pulse maxima with signals.

en.wikipedia.org...

Superluminal speeds are only observed and have only ever been observed when looking at group velocity. And since the object in question is emitting radio waves then it is not unusual that their group velocity exceeds c.

Originally posted by SLAYER69
OK S & F

Great find, Now...

The signal started when the nearby explosion took place now it is constant and traveling away from said explosion at great speed and is broadcasting it's position.

Maybe some kind of a battle is going on out there. Since the signal started after an explosion happened. Just a thought.