I am reminded of my favorite part of the whole Fast Radio Burst(FRB) story so far:<p>Since they had only been observed at 1.4 GHz, it was natural to think it was some sort of interference, since that is a busy frequency. Similar events that seemed to be terrestrial in origin were called Perytons (a mythological bird [1]) for some reason. This called into doubt that the FRBs were extragalactic, as claimed.<p>Then there was this fantastic paper [2] that completely figured it out (itself amazing). Turns out the "peryton" signals were from a microwave at a nearby building (lunch area for the lab or visitors) being opened while still on. There was just a grazing angle with the telescope that didn't block the signal, and the radio pulse looked very similar to an FRB.<p>The nail in the coffin? This plot (figure 4 and 7) showing that these signals peaked around lunchtime! Meanwhile the true FRBs were uniform in time, and so were not the same and agreed upon to not simply be interference.<p>[Disclaimer: I wrote a paper on FRBs, but was not involved in that work.]<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peryton" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peryton</a><p>[2] <a href="https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/mnras/stv1242" rel="nofollow">https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/mn...</a><p>or<p>arXiv <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1504.02165" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/abs/1504.02165</a>
The article kept saying "as much energy as 500 million suns". They lost me: If they meant "power of 500 million suns", then that's plenty amazing but okay. But "energy of 500 million suns" -- wow! Just blew the top off my scale of credibility. That is, for "the energy of 500 millon suns", take the mass of 500 millon suns, and calculate the energy from E = mc^2 and get a big number, especially for some radio waves lasting only a few milliseconds.<p>Of course, with more context, their statement was "powered by as much energy as 500 million suns", so they were working hard to confuse energy and power.<p>Eventually in the article I got the impression that they really meant the "power of 500 million suns" -- big difference between energy and power
e.g., the difference between KW and KWh, between Joules and Watts (for people who like MKS units).<p>Also likely want to make clear that are assuming that power level was uniform in all directions from the source, that is, not just <i>beamed</i> in a narrow beam pointed at earth.<p>Also of similar interest is an associated article at that site on detection of a cosmic ray with energy 320 EeV, that is, a well thrown bowling ball.
"The repeater may have created more questions than it delivered answers."<p>Difficult to understand as it is irregular with bursts at random intervals. "After 50 hours of seeing none during previous observations, the team now spotted them frequently, including, one time, a “double burst” of signals only 23 seconds apart."
My favorite theory is that they are actually artificial, alien light sails being used to travel.<p><a href="http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a25609/fast-radio-bursts-alien-space-travel/" rel="nofollow">http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a25609/fast-radio-burs...</a>
I'm reminded of the quote:<p>"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."<p>The universe is amazing and terrifying.
What's the difference between these Fast Radio Bursts and the Wow signal[1], which also seems to be described as a very powerful fast radio signal?<p>[1] <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal</a>
> The light buckets will act like floodlights in reverse, pulling in radio waves from a huge swath of sky.<p>So basically, they are nothing like floodlights.<p>OK I get it analogies are often important to make science accessible by the public, but at some point it just becomes confusing atop of incorrect.
May I propose: There is (A) a neutron star and (B) another dense object, a neutron star or a black hole, and the two have an electrostatic potential between them and are in very close orbits. Occasionally a spark jumps between the two. If the (A) neutron star is negative, then the spark consists of electrons. Else the spark consists of protons.<p>The spark is the source of the FRB.<p>Wild guess!
Is there any sci-fi book out there that describes something similar? Since we have no clue on what this is I'd be interested in reading far-fetched theories.
So this thing is located 1 gigaparsec away from us. The article also mentions that this thing is "probably less than 100 years old".
Which then means that this all happend 3 billion (+/- 100) years ago but we are only observing it now?
It's just a bug in the holomatrix of the universe. As we get better peering behind the curtain, we'll see more bugs and maybe even be able to exploit them. Not that that's necessarily a good thing.
Hmm... something funky going down in Quemado? Experiments at the lightning farm? If you haven't done the self-guided tour of the VLA, you've just not lived yet! Though it was pretty cool seeing the all out there (highly recommend taking along some lawn chairs and camping out a bit north of Quemado for some very dark sky viewing)