3 ms·
Will we ever find out what this actually means in our lifetime?
by foobaw 5y ago
Will we ever find out what this actually means in our lifetime?
- pixel_tracing 5y agoAren’t these just quasars? Not necessarily anything that special. Are people thinking this is extra terrestrial communication of some sort?
- King-Aaron 5y agoCorrect, and it is pretty special to learn that (while still rare), they're far more common than we initially thought
- steve_adams_86 5y agoI agree. As a child I thought these would be extremely rare. In my naive little kid brain I guess I figured there must be only a handful of them known to exist, and I had endless ideas about how such a rare and unique celestial entity must have alien origins. Haha.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- colordrops 5y agoThe article says otherwise.
- _Nat_ 5y agoNope, fast-radio-bursts (FRB's) aren't commonly attributed to quasars. From ["Not all fast radio bursts are created equal"](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03894-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03894-6), 2020-01-06: > Curiously, because the luminosity of a typical quasar is not dissimilar to the peak luminosity of an FRB, we cannot yet completely discount the involvement of supermassive black holes. But Marcote and colleagues’ results argue against that possibility, and the timescales for quasar variability are more likely to be days to months than milliseconds. Wikipedia has a [section on hypotheses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_radio_burst#Origin_hypotheses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_radio_burst#Origin_hypoth...).
- dvh 5y agoI favor "asteroid falling on the neuron stars" theory. Both are common and it would also explain periodical ones.
- midrus 5y agoI just imagined how a neuron star would look like. Creepy.
- idiotsecant 5y agoThat must be a heck of a big asteroid.