Mysterious radio signals from 11 billion light years away detected

An international team of researchers have detected mysterious bursts of radio waves originating from billions of light years away.

An international team of researchers have detected mysterious bursts of radio waves originating from billions of light years away. Six years ago, a single burst lasting less than a tenth of an eye blink had been reported. It was so ephemeral that scientists were unsure whether it actually took place or not. But this time round, the 64 metre Parkes radio telescope in Australia recorded 4 such bursts of very high energy radio waves coming from a very long distance.

The scientists also think that the findings suggest that there should be one of these signals going off every 10 seconds if the whole sky is observed through 'radio eyes', that is, through telescopes that detect radio waves.

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Naturally occurring radio waves from things such as pulsars most likely, highly doubtful they are from any advanced civilisation (unless it turns out they are picking up our own radio transmissions being reflected back from a nearby source).

Even if there is intelligent life out there, I doubt it existed 11 billion years ago.

Interesting story though

reply to post by mohan168


Unless I read the article wrong, it seems the scientists concluded that the signal was a natural event.

Space sure is a tease sometimes

/Second line not sure if we still have to do this or not.

Originally posted by MystiqueAgent

/Second line not sure if we still have to do this or not.

You never did have to do that.

A one line post has always been ok providing it contributed to the discussion, it isn't an automated system that bollocks one liners, it's the mods who do it manually, if they decided the one line post doesn't contribute in any way.

i would really like to know the pinpoint direction of that very short but powerful radio blast...which is implied to be a very dense collection of radio waves (like a broad bandwidth of the internet)

because that position in the cosmos just might be the fabled place called 'Heaven'
...it would be interesting to see just what area of our zodiac is the focal point...
bet if the source is located in the Scorpion or the Dragon signs...that it will quickly not be associated with Heaven

The scientists studied the energy of these bursts and concluded that they originate from an extreme astrophysical event involving relativistic objects such as neutron stars or black holes. They ruled out terrestrial sources for the fast radio bursts and say their brightness and distance suggest they come from cosmological distances when the universe was just half its current age.

These things are pretty amazing but are not Alien , the energy they produce is mind boggling

He said: "Magnetars can give off more energy in a millisecond than our sun does in 300,000 years and are a leading candidate for the burst."

reply to post by woogleuk


Aah okay I figured one liners were never okay. I usually always so someone doing that so I figured well I may as well start doing it every now and again if I have to; thank you for the clarification though

reply to post by mohan168

Thanks for bringing it. From your link:

the origin of these explosive bursts may be from magnetic neutron stars, known as 'magnetars'. He said: "Magnetars can give off more energy in a millisecond than our sun does in 300,000 years and are a leading candidate for the burst."

The article states that they happen too fast to capture in other spectrums. Thats interesting. Usually very large explosions in space take a while to develop. Wonder what can be so powerful as to generate that strong of a radio "shock wave" that we can still detect it 10 billion years later and at the same time so short a duration or "pulse"?

Did I read that correctly, 1/10th of an eye blink?

Thats what makes it mysterious to the astronomers. As yet un-specified phenomenon.

In a galaxy a long time ago and far, far away...

Well, in so far as the articles contents are unlikely to be directly related to alien intelligences, UFO and the like, perhaps this thread would have been better off in the science and technology forum?

But that said, these bursts, if frequent, may teach us much about the universe. For instance, studying the amplitude and the frequency of these radio signals in more detail will increase our understanding of the phenomenon which causes them. But further more, if I am reading the article correctlty, it seems to suggest that the waves could not only teach us about the objects which are producing them (and no, I do not mean UFO, I mean things like the magnetars mentioned in the article, or Pulsars as mentioned by a previous poster), but about the space between here and the objects involved.

I imagine that using intereference pattern analysis over a significant period on these powerful radio sources, will allow scientists to figure out interesting things about the intervening space. Perhaps even create a rough radio map of that area of space, with any areas of interest being those which, presumably have reflected or absorbed the waves, rather than allowing them to pass, therefore creating anomalies in the recorded data. So rather than looking for interesting radio waves, they will end up looking for holes in the signal which might indicate a mass between us, and the origin point.

Pretty bloody interesting, wether its appropriate for this forum or not!

The 10-11 billion light years away reading is almost comical to me. If these waves are that old they could have "circled" the universe completely many times over. No one really knows if that's possible or not or 10 billion light years away even exists. Maybe it circles every 10,000 years and has completed the circuit 1000's of times over thus explaining the decay. Or maybe it is from 1000 light years away and our understanding of how these waves deteriorate in deep space is misunderstood. ?????

reply to post by TrueBrit

Aww comeon, you know you want it to be the Death Star destroying planets!

Interesting idea you laid out there. Sort of reverse radio mapping of the sky? They could conceivably detect "missing matter" that way? Like if the Universe were full of lone, stable black holes that had already eaten their fill of galaxies and were sort of wandering deep space, quietly invisible?

Originally posted by sligtlyskeptical
The 10-11 billion light years away reading is almost comical to me. If these waves are that old they could have "circled" the universe completely many times over. No one really knows if that's possible or not or 10 billion light years away even exists. Maybe it circles every 10,000 years and has completed the circuit 1000's of times over thus explaining the decay. Or maybe it is from 1000 light years away and our understanding of how these waves deteriorate in deep space is misunderstood. ?????

I think they "fix" the position of such events using a number of radio telescopes. They call them Very Large Arrays. The signals strike each dish in turn a moment after the last, thus pointing to the "source".

reply to post by intrptr


Well, anything that happens to be out there, which would interfere with a radio signal basically. That could be a dense concentration of matter, like a star system, or a black hole maybe.

I reckon it would be like forensic blood spatter analysis. Lets say that a victim has been shot during a theft, and high velocity spatter has coated a wall behind the victim. That blood sprays not only onto the wall, but onto anything ON the wall. Therefore, if the forensics technicians that examine the scene, find a void in the spatter, they will know the size of the frame that has been removed from the wall.

Now obviously radio signals are not blood spatter. They are fleeting, they are fast. But if the signal is recorded, images created representing the signal density and so on,, perhaps by the voids in that data, similar assertions as to what got in the way can be made. Its just that instead of blood and artwork, we are talking radio waves and cosmic objects of interest.

Pulsar by the sound of it. People hear the words "radio waves" and automatically think aliens are trying to contact us, when a lot of astronomical things out there can make radio waves.

reply to post by mohan168


I like this one, there are many possible explanation's and that includes artificial but why is artificial so unlikely?.
Well the universe is believed to be only a 3 billion years older than the source of this signal so the likely hood of any intelligent race at that time is so miniscule that while not impossible it would have had to evolve in a universe with dense radiation that was younger and smaller than it now is with a far higher background temperature than today.
en.wikipedia.org...

I would love to be wrong but also it would make me sad that we would never meet the sender of such a signal as they would likely have been extinct for a very long time indeed.

There was once a signal were it was assumed to be a freak but when one researcher idling away the time joined the dot's it was a image of a man like figure waving one hand and a radio telescope antennae, now I don't have an url to that one but some kind soul might post one for you.

reply to post by TrueBrit

Therefore, if the forensics technicians that examine the scene, find a void in the spatter, they will know the size of the frame that has been removed from the wall.

I see. I wonder what the radio splatter "around" a black hole would look like? Dilated or stretched maybe? Or perfectly round? A very large perfectly round void in the signal. From 10 billion light years away, there could be a lot of stuff in between. Not sure how many objects are large enough to warp a radio signal. Stars, a little bit.

Dark galaxy eaters would surely leave a void.

When the discussion comes around to "alien signals" I can't help but assume we would first receive signals much akin to the first radio and TV signals which we broadcast. I think these are out to less than 100 light years by now.
Some have said we should send a reply to any signals which we receive. I would wonder if "they" are even looking for others as we are; or if they are equipt to receive a reply from someone they are not searching for.
Of course, by the time our "response" reaches them they may have began searching and our signal would make them thing we are much closer than we are.
What a mix-up this could make.

They haven't said what the signal(s) said. Why not?

reply to post by suz62


Signal does not equal information in the same way you are thinking. Radio waves occur naturally, and it is only because we have developed the ability to modulate radio frequencies, and how to send data via those frequencies, which allows us to communicate like we do.

It is similar in essence to the wind. There is wind in nature, but it is only when we manipulate the air with our throats, our tongues and lips, that words are formed and verbal communication occurs.