Mysterious radio signals from 11 billion light years away detected

Originally posted by gortex

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."

That is pretty awesome and that's one hell of a energy producer. Pretty mind boggling if you ask me.

-SAP-

reply to post by TrueBrit


Yeah, I had a "duh" moment there. Really really wanted ET to be on the other end of this thing.

Originally posted by woogleuk
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

The universe is estimated to be 13 billion years old. Are you saying 2 billion years is not long enough for a species to discover radio signals?

reply to post by Cuervo


If that's the case they would be or have been one of the oldest species in the universe to have found radio technology within 2 billion years. Based on what we know about evolution here, is that it tooks us a very, very long time to get to the state we are in now. Not only would these "ETs" be old but they would also be super advanced.

I'm not saying it's not possible because technically speaking anything could evolve anywhere, but it's just seems highly unlikely for a race to be that advanced and be that young...

-SAP-

reply to post by suz62


I know how you feel in that regard. Nothing would interest me more than to discover what we share the universe with. However, if that is where ones interests lay, then one has an obligation to be objective about these things, and apply reason before spirit so to speak.

I do however, understand your enthusiasm. There is nothing quite like a new, marvelous, and mysterious event, to whet the appetite for discovery. And these signals represent not just a discovery, but a potential way of making yet more discoveries, so there will be plenty in time to come, to further interest us in the same way.

Flipping double bloody post.

Second line to add: guess I was a little to enthusiastic with my post button eh!?

reply to post by TrueBrit

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.

Interesting idea. A kind of 3D map of the areas of space the beam passed through based on variations in the beam itself.

We use a similar method to see what elements are contained in Stars and other planets, so perhaps your idea might have some value, other than being a good idea.

On a side note, it's a shame we couldn't figure out how to capture a portion of this kind of Cosmic energy or create a similar effect on a much smaller scale...a microsecond = to 300,000 years output of Sol?

Now that's energy!

reply to post by MysterX


The only difficulty I can see with trying to capture radio waves as an energy source, is that thier photons have relatively low energy, and at the range we are talking about, the capture area would have to be gigantic if one wanted to accumulate a decent gain in stored energy.

Otherwise it is certainly an interesting notion.

On the matter of using the radio signals to assist with mapping, that is what I am most interested in. Exploration beats energy security in any game

Originally posted by Cuervo

The universe is estimated to be 13 billion years old. Are you saying 2 billion years is not long enough for a species to discover radio signals?

Yes, yes I am saying that....planets and species didn't pop up overnight.

Our own solar system is only 4-5 billion years old.

That first 2 billion years the galaxies and solar systems were still just pulling themselves together.

reply to post by mohan168

Our solar system is generally agreed to be 4.6 billion years old.

These signals are 11 billion years old.

Even if they are of sentient origin there's no way they were aimed at us.

reply to post by woogleuk


The Universe is 400 billion years old, the problem is Earth did not exist 11 billion years ago, so the signal is not directed at us specifically, but rather someone forgot where they parked their spaceship and they sounded the alarm to try and find it.

I hope they're talking about distance and not actual time. There is no time in space! It's made up by humans on cesium centric methodology which even then is distorted because it relies on the light distance of the measuring device to the eyeball of the observer. We got graphics of inside the atom...so they might mess their lab coats when they find out that the spin of an atom can be slowed or sped up, thus hacking the atom to mess with a clock. And more when you figure that a near earth object can be ripped to create radio blip that looks ancient. Thanks a lot, "laws of astrophysics"

Magnetar, rar! That star sounds like something extinct all right.

How do we know the blip didn't hop through a rip in 11 billion parallel universes before making it as light here? And somewhere on the other side of the planet a mosquito sneezes and rips a distortion in the universe welcoming a filler for the absence on the other side of the planet.

4 bursts. This is subliminal programming from the makers of Starburst, I knew it! Ready to name the bursts? Cherry, lemon, pink something because it's not strawberry no matter how much you lie to me, and orange. The Australia slogan is "Tastes like summer, let your starburst out" which is crazy because it's winter down there right now, and it's only summer in the northern hemisphere.

The scientific-looking article was an occult ritual to boost sales. I see what you did there.

Originally posted by Irako
reply to post by mohan168

 

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

It is of course...

Originally posted by intrptr
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...

edit on 5-7-2013 by intrptr because: spelling

Something like a pulsar with an extremely fast rotation might produce such a phenomena. That basically means that it's "day" (rotational period) is 1/10th of an eyeblink.

Originally posted by soulpowertothendegree
reply to post by woogleuk

 

The Universe is 400 billion years old, the problem is Earth did not exist 11 billion years ago, so the signal is not directed at us specifically, but rather someone forgot where they parked their spaceship and they sounded the alarm to try and find it.

The universe is said to be something on the order of 14 billions years old...perhaps 16. 400 is not correct by many magnitudes. Earth is 4 billion years old.

Originally posted by SloAnPainful
reply to post by Cuervo

 

If that's the case they would be or have been one of the oldest species in the universe to have found radio technology within 2 billion years. Based on what we know about evolution here, is that it tooks us a very, very long time to get to the state we are in now. Not only would these "ETs" be old but they would also be super advanced.

I'm not saying it's not possible because technically speaking anything could evolve anywhere, but it's just seems highly unlikely for a race to be that advanced and be that young...

-SAP-

Our world is 4 billion years old....our species is what, a couple hundred thousand years old? If one of the first planets formed was hospitable in a shorter period than ours, and did not suffer the mass extinction events ours did, it could be quite possible that intelligent life might develop in 2 billion years.

What if there had been intelligent dinosaurs? They were around much longer than mammals have been.

To say that the evolution of a planet and a species would necessarily have to follow our own pattern of development is facile at best.

reply to post by bbracken677

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"?

---

Something like a pulsar with an extremely fast rotation might produce such a phenomena. That basically means that it's "day" (rotational period) is 1/10th of an eyeblink.

Ahh soo... thanks, that makes perfect sense.

Man, that is some beacon!

It can't be pulsars, pulsars have regularly timed bursts. As the article states and some other posters as well, the strongest suspect seems to be magnetars... and I'm sure even they didn't say so, they tried to 'decode' to see if it were artificial but discovered no message. 11 Billion years puts it outside our galaxy I think but certainly not the universe, in addition we have no idea the speed of the edge of the universe, the edge could have started it's journey 14 billion years ago but could have accelerated and is now 14.01 billion years away (I hate when I get to thinking this way). At any rate it's extremely unlikely that this is alien, but you can't really say impossible... can ya?

reply to post by bbracken677


400...14....they don't have a clue how old the universe is...............it doesn't matter.....any perceived "Signal" is not directed at good old Earth.

reply to post by mohan168


11 Billion light years ? How is that even a measurable distance of space time ?