Earth receiving mysterious radio signals (opens in new tab)

(ibtimes.co.uk)

148 pointsq711y ago28 comments

28 comments

25 comments · 12 top-level

dfryer11y ago· 4 in thread

The paper is much more conservative than the article about it. They're saying that the close relationship between the signal and the human-made second, plus the fact that most of these signals were observed at one particular telescope, suggests strongly that it's a local, human source.

"Paper doesn't rule out aliens" isn't a particularly strong statement. I've read many papers that don't rule out aliens, dragons OR unicorns.

dchichkov11y ago

The paper starts with: "Eleven FRBs have been detected so far, nine with the Parkes and one at the Arecibo telescope." That arithmetic is wrong. Tongue-in-the-cheek - April's fool?

edit: it actually seems more like a genuine typo in a pre-print. The list further in the article contains 10 FRBs from Parkes. edit 2: linked to the abstract.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1503.05245

Sniffnoy11y ago

A note -- if you're linking to arXiv, it's better to link to the abstract (http://arxiv.org/abs/1503.05245) rather than directly to the PDF. From the abstract, one can easily click through to the PDF; not so the reverse. And the abstract allows one to do things like see different versions of the paper, search for other things by the same authors, etc.

cpeterso11y ago

The eleventh could have been detected somewhere else.

lotsofmangos11y ago

Is always a good idea to not rule out aliens, just in case. Especially aliens with elaborate senses of humour. It might explain a lot.

houseofshards11y ago· 3 in thread

What does the article mean by "fast" radio signals ? Don't radio waves always travel at the speed of light ?

JonathonW11y ago

They're "fast" in that they only last a short period of time-- these signals only last a few milliseconds, and they're rarely detected in real-time.

justinpombrio11y ago

So... brief.

gre11y ago

They mean the signals last about a millisecond.

recondite11y ago· 2 in thread

Just don't forget, the primer is 3-dimensional: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgPSUer1ujM

There, I just saved us like a week's worth of effort.

rustyconover11y ago

We just have to think like a Vegan. No meat, no dairy, no animal products. And intergalactic wormholes.

kposehn11y ago

Because once upon a time, we were each a hell of an engineer.

1 more reply

uoou11y ago· 1 in thread

From the linked paper:

>the suggestive correlation with terrestrial time standards seems to nearly clinch the case for human association of these peculiar phenomena

More from this author:

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/earth-sized-ufo-spotted-nasa-images...

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ufo-hunter-believes-nasa-cut-off-li...

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nasa-secretly-contact-aliens-allege...

danhon11y ago

"Arjun Varma is the Senior Correspondent, Entertainment at International Business Times. He comes from a diverse media background having worked across film, TV, print and digital."

So, not science reporting, then.

sytelus11y ago· 1 in thread

This is very interesting paper that just came out last week. So they found fast radio bursts (FRB) to have DMs (Dispersion Measure) that are in perfect multiplication with integers to a constant. This was supposed to be bit more random and so these being in such order is very surprising and unlikely to be just coincidence. Only 11 FRBs are found so far which might also means source of signal is not all around. On the downside, the signal were assumed to require huge amount of energy in short burst that Sun would produce in entire day. That assumption lead to belief that FRBs were too close to be in our Milkeyway and more likely to be in other galaxy. Overall very interesting development.

cpncrunch11y ago

No, they're not -- read the paper. You'll see that the DMs are close to multiples of 187.5, but not exact. In fact some are quite far off (5%). I'm slightly dubious of the paper. I haven't calculated the probability myself, but is the 1/10000 chance calculated from assuming they are exactly 187.5 multiples (DMest), or from the actual results (which aren't exact multiples)? I'm hoping it's the latter.

tomrod11y ago· 1 in thread

Much like many things: cool if true, and I wonder what's behind it. (e.g. Bloop, EM Drive, etc.)

modzu11y ago

they suggest it could be a cell phone tower :(

KamiCrit11y ago· 1 in thread

Wow!

omeid211y ago

I am guessing the down votes are from people who love jumping the gun.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal

FatalLogic11y ago

Maybe this is a better link for this story? http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22630153.600-is-this-e...

johnsolo170111y ago

Good commentary here: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/02/mathemati...

IndianAstronaut11y ago

This has me curious as to how much radio data from space remains unanalyzed? There is probably more data being received than the select group of scientists working on this can analyze. How much machine learning power has been directed at this?

capex11y ago

First I double checked if 1st April has passed.

soheil11y ago

"Failing some observational bias, the suggestive correlation with terrestrial time standards seems to nearly clinch the case for human association of these peculiar phenomena."

It's just from the latest NSA microwave oven.

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