8 ms·
A mysterious radio burst that keeps repeating
- avmich 6y agoReminds Stanislaw Lem's His Master's Voice.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y agoI’ve been reading Lem’s work lately but haven’t gotten to this one. Do you recommend it?
- avmich 6y agoWrote too long a review :) in short words - yes, I'd recommend it, I like it a lot - and know many people who don't.
- signa11 6y agoyup. what a lovely and hugely thought provoking book. specifically on the nature of cognition, and our need to impose order / structure on unknown. which ultimately, is a reflection on ourselves...
- Florin_Andrei 6y agoMagnetar orbiting a black hole or something.
- valuearb 6y agoAnd we know it’s a 157 day orbit.
- ccozan 6y agoCould be a tidal lock of a pulsar around a black hole. We only get the milisecond because the black hole is obscuring the burst pointing to us. Otherwise the beam is not pointed at us. (P)--->---- ( BH ) ----> ( Solar System )
- scns 6y agoDid you mean a Pulsar?
- Florin_Andrei 6y agoThey're all neutron stars. Magnetars are young and make some of the strongest magnetic fields in the universe. Pulsars are old and weak, and make regular beeps if you're watching them from the right place. They're probably on a spectrum, as opposed to rigidly separated categories. There's a hypothesis that the fast radio bursts like the ones detected here might be produced by magnetars.
- jldugger 6y agoInterstellar numbers station.
- severak_cz 6y agoexactly this I was thinking about :D
- hindsightbias 6y agoBetter than an interstellar microwave weapon
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- _nalply 6y agoFor me it looks like a source with two rotations, one for the millisecond cycle and the other for the 157-day cycle. Perhaps something is obstructing the source and is rotating around it.
- aspyct 6y agoThe article was nice, but when I hit the back button , the site scrolled to a suggested article and told me "hey, check this before you go". No, just let me use my back button.
- dunefox 6y agoInstall a script blocker.
- amelius 6y agoCan't you just disable hijacking of the history in the browser?
- pastrami_panda 6y agoIs there a term for this terrible practice? Should be similar to scrolljacking, but backjacking feels weird... perhaps navjacking?
- rapnie 6y agoNot the right term, but certainly a 'dark pattern'. It could be 'button hijacking', though.
- i386 6y agoI dislike that comments like this are the top voted comment rather than something insightful about the article’s content itself.
- detaro 6y ago> Please don't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be interesting https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- aspyct 6y agoFair enough, I didn't know. I can't find a "delete" button for my comment though. Where is it? On the other hand though, I feel like we should always complain about that kind of behavior, if at least to shame the practice and encourage developers to actively refuse implementing those.
- xutopia 6y agoIf I were trying to let intelligent life elsewhere know that I exist and that I am intelligent I would have to create a patterned noise that distinguishes itself from natural noises that could be formed spontaneously. Talk about a challenge!
- yencabulator 6y agoI believe the standard solution is to send a sequence of signals with durations being consecutive prime numbers (multiplied by some unit of time, but that's irrelevant). The canonical answer ("Yes, I am very smart too") is to reply with a continuation of the sequence where the transmission stopped.
- eru 6y agoYou could also eg convert the sequence from binary into graycode instead of continuing it. Just any simple transformation that's obviously not background noise.
- taneq 6y agoCheck the staff roster to see if the bursts match up with anyone using the downstairs microwave.
- cheerlessbog 6y agoSomeone who only eats when the telescope is observing FRB121102
- irjustin 6y agoWe should study that person who is capable of 157-days between meals.
- userbinator 6y agoThe background to that reference is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peryton_(astronomy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peryton_(astronomy)
- comfrey 6y agoMy favorite part of that story IIRC is that it only registered when people opened the microwave before the alarm went off. I am more patient now to let the microwave complete after hearing about subtleties of the microwave emissions.
- taneq 6y agoMe too, I now either wait for it to time out or hit the stop button before opening the door. It's completely irrational and I feel a bit silly for it since I don't live anywhere near a radio observatory, but I still do it.
- rhn_mk1 6y agoWiFi users in your neighborhood are thankful.
- 6y ago
- Cyphase 6y agoHere's the section on FRB 121102 on the "Fast radio burst" Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_radio_burst#FRB_121102 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_radio_burst#FRB_121102
- m3kw9 6y ago“ within those milliseconds, they can discharge as much power as hundreds of millions of Suns.” Didn’t know that
- muthdra 6y agoBut is it the full power of the entire life of millions of suns or the equivalent of what millions of suns produce in a millisecond?
- rabidrat 6y agoPower is by definition per unit time.
- sgt101 6y agoAlthough these bursts are coming from a place where time is rather more spread out than it is here.
- solarengineer 6y agoWhat does that mean!? Might a millisecond there last as long as a few of our Earth seconds? What is this concept called ( for me to read up on it)?
- sgt101 6y agoI think this is a good place to have a look : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_time_dilation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_time_dilation My assumption is that the place that this burst is coming from is near a very large, very dense mass.
- muthdra 6y agoThat wasn't a joke on units of measurement. It was a joke on grammar.
- 6y ago
- skee0083 6y agoSo. Is it aliens or not.
- doctoboggan 6y agoIt’s never aliens
- senectus1 6y agoor Lupus...
- dylan604 6y agoThe radio bursts are alien to us. They come from another place that is not here, therefore, alien.
- vaxman 6y agohumpback wales checking in with their peeps
- HenryKissinger 6y ago:(