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Mysterious deep-space flashes repeat every 157 days
- kristopolous 6y agoThe stable period is fascinating. Celestial machinery is an actual thing.
- kitd 6y agoEven more so when the period is at normal everyday human timescales.
- raxxorrax 6y agoAstronomy is certainly an endeavor of multigenerational patience. Mazing and frustrating at the same time.
- cgriswald 6y agoAstronomers substitute "lots and lots of similar objects at different stages of evolution" for time. Most of the timescales involved are longer than the time humans have existed on Earth and much longer than civilization.
- DrBazza 6y agoNeutron stars are interesting... "At its equator it is spinning at approximately 24% of the speed of light, or over 70,000 km per second." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_J1748%E2%88%922446ad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_J1748%E2%88%922446ad Magnetars, even more so - and can have a measurable effect on the Earth's atmosphere: https://slate.com/technology/2012/12/cosmic-blast-magnetar-explosion-rocked-earth-on-december-27-2004.html https://slate.com/technology/2012/12/cosmic-blast-magnetar-e... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGR_1806%E2%88%9220 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGR_1806%E2%88%9220
- throw1234651234 6y agoDo we have any way to know whether or not these are directional?
- aruggirello 6y agoAFAIK, not directly. The only way possible would be to observe one behind a gravitational lens. That would appear as multiple sources, allowing us to observe the object from slightly different directions, confirming that the flashes are indeed at least cone-shaped. Edit: clarified
- isoprophlex 6y agoImagine it's coming from a bunch of alien networking gear, sending packets of data across galaxies...
- m00dy 6y agothen it hits the planet Earth and then package is now dropped
- jagged-chisel 6y agoIt's UDP; they don't have to care.
- kaetemi 6y agoOr, you know, it's addressed to a giant spaceship that just happens to be hanging around near Earth.
- Freestyler_3 6y agoin that case it might just be dolphins.
- zelphirkalt 6y agoThe cavemen ate our packages again! Need to clean up that pipe at some point.
- myself248 6y agoIt obstructs my view of Venus!
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoThe thing with these is that they have to be very directional to even reach us, and (in the article), it mentions the bursts have the energy of a century of our sun's output; if it is alien networking gear, they'd have to be able to generate that power somehow. Dyson spheres wouldn't cut it.
- zachrip 6y agoWhat if it's something simple like a galactic lighthouse of sorts? Not sure why I'm being downvoted. Lighthouses use directional light and if you're stationary you'll see the light at certain increments of time. An advanced race might be saying "don't go here" or "be careful." Just like we do for ships here.
- zatel 6y agoI like this idea. Orienting people in the dark of the cosmos. Find your way home just follow the flash
- jacquesm 6y agoOr attract some moths to the flame for consumption...
- imglorp 6y agoThere are lots of naturally occurring ones such as pulsars, enough to the point they could be used for 3D navigation, if you can find your distance to them. It's an old idea: Pioneer and later spacecraft have a plaque showing our location relative to distances to pulsars we can see from Earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar#/media/File:Pioneer_plaque_sun.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar#/media/File:Pioneer_pla... edit: I guess if you're a Type 3 civilization with nothing better to do, you wouldn't have to set up lighthouses but you could better direct your attention to moving galaxies around or whatever.
- privong 6y ago> There are lots of naturally occurring ones such as pulsars, enough to the point they could be used for 3D navigation, if you can find your distance to them. There's work towards this, from the X-ray emission of pulsars[0]. I don't think you'd need a precise distance to the pulsars to measure your own position, as long as you're measuring your own position relative to some other object (e.g., Solar System barycenter). If it's a relative measurement then you should be able to determine that by comparing the time-of-arrival (TOA) of the pulsed emission from multiple pulsars with the TOAs at Earth. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_pulsar-based_navigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_pulsar-based_navigation
- Vysero 6y agoThe idea that aliens would use these to propel ships is rather ludicrous, and highly unlikely. The nearest galaxy is 25k light years away so even at the maximum speed it would take 25 thousand years to travel here. That being said, it must be something exceptionally energetic.. wish I could see it.
- TomBombadildoze 6y ago> The nearest galaxy is 25k light years away so even at the maximum speed it would take 25 thousand years to travel here. Given your arithmetic, I assume by "maximum speed" you mean the speed of light, in which case travel wouldn't take 25k years. It would in fact be instantaneous. At relativistic speeds, distances contract and time dilates. Now, this is all moot because this: > The idea that aliens would use these to propel ships is rather ludicrous, and highly unlikely. ... is absolutely correct. No amount of energy will propel a massive object to the speed of light. edit: I realized I may have misinterpreted. From the perspective of someone watching their own kind travel that expanse, it would indeed appear to the outside observer to take 25k years to travel.
- umvi 6y agoPlus reaching the speed of light requires infinite energy, literally. You have to settle on some small fraction of the speed of light, depending on how much mass and energy you have.
- mandarg 6y agoHere is an index of different theories that astrophysics departments have developed to explain these FRBs (Fast Radio Bursts): https://frbtheorycat.org/index.php/Main_Page https://frbtheorycat.org/index.php/Main_Page. There are links to all of the corresponding papers as well.
- airstrike 6y agoThanks. Found what I was looking for: "Fast Radio Bursts from Extragalactic Light Sails" https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017ApJ...837L..23L/abstract https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017ApJ...837L..23L/abstra...
- raghava 6y ago> Researchers monitored the known repeater FRB 121102 with the Lovell Telescope, a 250-foot-wide (76 meters) radio dish at Jodrell Bank Observatory in England, over the course of five years. They found strong indications of a 157-day activity cycle; 121102 seems to flare up for 90 days and then go silent for 67, the team reported in a new study. > It's unclear what's behind such cyclic activity, though scientists do have a few ideas. For example, periodic flare-ups could be caused by a wobble in the rotational axis of a highly magnetized neutron star known as a magnetar. Or they could be linked to the orbital motions of a neutron star in a binary system. Could this be the Dzhanibekov Effect ? Funny I just stumbled upon it today! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VPfZ_XzisU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VPfZ_XzisU If Earth can maintain a stable axis, such wobbly oscillating axis could be that star's "normal". Just guessing! Or may be am too wrong. I am not a physicist!
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago> I am not a physicist! Man, don't be too modest. With these few lines I'd be tempted to award you a Nobel prize if I were the judge :) (exaggerating a bit, but more seriously: you seem to have your chops in this department).
- biolurker1 6y agowhat can be sure is that they are not trying to make their presence known because at then they would make them non-repeating on purpose
- womitt 6y agoJust the admin taking snapshots in case he has to roll back ;)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bkrishnan 6y ago"They found strong indications of a 157-day activity cycle; 121102 seems to flare up for 90 days and then go silent for 67, the team reported in a new study." Maybe there's nothing to it, but both 157 and 67 are primes.
- MR4D 6y agoThey may be primes, but they are primes of an Earth day, which, as far as I am aware, is the only place where those numbers would be 157 & 67. As an example, our day on Earth is roughly 1440 minutes, while on Mars it is 1477 minutes. So on Mars it would be 153 & 65 day intervals. I deliberately chose the closest comparison to Earth. Had I chosen any other planet in our solar system, the numbers would have been much, much more different (on Jupiter it would be 406 & 173 days, respectively).
- fred_is_fred 6y agoPerhaps someone can find a planet where the timing is in the Fibonacci sequence relative to some local time measurement mechanism.
- sveme 6y agoNot that it means anything, but are you using Mars or Earth days for Mars?
- perseusprime11 6y agoEvery 157 days feels like travel time. Can we isolate everything that in the Universe that takes 157 days from Earth and scanning the sky?