Prof Cox likes the idea it could be for propulsion across the void, icon is obvious.
15 'could it be aliens?' fast radio bursts observed in one night
Fast Radio Burst-hunters have suffered London Bus syndrome again: fifteen have shown up at once. A bout of sky-watching at Green Bank in West Virginia, under the auspices of the Breakthrough Initiative's Listen project, has turned up 15 pulses from repeater source FRB 121102. Boffins already knew FRB 121102 was enticing: back …
COMMENTS
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Monday 4th September 2017 05:54 GMT Anonymous Coward
Communication that required power at that level would be rather inefficient, one would think. But when we see theories about creating actual wormholes, warp drive etc. we're always told the power requirements would be ridiculous. Like maybe something with "million trillion trillion" in it :)
Yeah, I know, 99.99999% chance it is natural and we just don't understand it. But fun to think about some alien warp driving overlords, even if they only lived in our distant past.
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Monday 4th September 2017 08:39 GMT Dave 126
There's a difference between liking an idea and believing it. I like the idea that there will be a roast duck in my oven when I return home... it doesn't mean that I believe it.
Using 'Aliens' as a placeholder is healthy, because it doesn't colour any working theory (which currently is a weird neutron star with a massive magnetic field). It also has form: Pulsars were once known as LGMs (Little Green Men), until a better explanation was arrived at.
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Monday 4th September 2017 08:51 GMT Tom 64
Well if it is an alien communication beacon or propulsion system, they've fucked up. I imagine they have cooked themselves with it quite nicely, along with everything else in their galaxy.
That's the kind of engineering screw up that would make both captain Picard and his number one facepalm.
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Wednesday 6th September 2017 17:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
@Chris G - 15 death stars
We can't pinpoint the exact location of this at such a distance, who's to say it wasn't 15 death stars located at various places in a Milky Way sized galaxy, destroyed over a period of 200,000 years, that due to an amazing cosmic coincidence just happened to have their light all reach us at the same moment :)
Or way one Super Death Star that had 15 reactors inside it, which exploded in sequence causing 15 separate flashes?
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Monday 4th September 2017 11:58 GMT not.known@this.address
Re: But sadly...
Dammit DougS, you've just given away the plot for Star wars Episode 9!
(The First Order have a half-constructed Starkiller Base 2 that the Resistance think is not yet operational so they send a small group to the forest moon of NotNamedYet where they meet the incredibly cute and highly marketable cuddly StrangeNamedAliens who show then a sneaky way into the deflector shield control room just in time to save the whole Resistance fleet that has just arrived and discovered Starkiller Base 2 may not be complete but the Flippin' Big Gun is already fully functional and ready to blow up starships with no blowthrough even though it appears to use the same energy to vapourise an entire planet many magnitudes bigger than the starship...
(Darn, forgot the first half of the film where Rey, Chewie, Luke and someone else - possibly Maz Kanata? - have to return to Jakku to rescue Finn from where Unkar Plutt has him mounted on a wall...)
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Tuesday 5th September 2017 06:57 GMT macjules
Re: But sadly...
It's all because of this bloody planet that keeps wanting to leave the Empire. They sent their chief negotiator D'dvd Dvi|es to try and blackmail the Emperor so it has been necessary to teach the planet 'a lesson'.
D'dvd Dvi|es: "I didn't know we had an extra moon"
Imperial negotiator: "That's no moon"
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Monday 4th September 2017 15:29 GMT AceRimmer1980
Re: Arkintoofle Minor
is a planet which is home to the Hingefreel race. This race attempted to build ships powered by bad news, as this has the well-known ability to travel faster than light. However, the idea was soon abandoned as the ships were unwelcome wherever they landed (or attempted to do so).
(c) Sun-Earther Douglas 'DNA' Adams of Cambridge.
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Monday 4th September 2017 06:52 GMT G Mac
I am Appalled and Outraged!
After re-calibrating my units of measure system to the Reg's common sense and entirely practical system, q.v. https://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/page/reg-standards-converter.html, I find that this article uses a non-standard unit of measurement! Unacceptable!
I demand that The Register, if it is to maintain it's readers expected high standard of reporting, to immediately rectify the situation by using an approved Reg unit.
Given we have force (the Norris) and distance (possibly the Linguine is most relevant), I suggest The Register immediately gets to work to supply both the name of the Reg unit and it's conversion rate, particularly to this thing called a 'joule', on which I am unable find any information on the Reg's standard converter, making it, the joule, a meaningless unit.
Signed
Appalled A. Outraged
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Monday 4th September 2017 09:51 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: the energy content of a "standard" English breakfast?
Looking at https://guysandgoodhealth.com/2012/03/15/how-many-calories-in-a-full-english-breakfast/
we see a figure of 850 calories, which www.rapidtables.com converts to about 3.6 MJ; so the 10 million trillion trillion Joules becomes about 3 trillion trillion EBf.
However, there's no black pudding, and only one sausage, and one slice of toast; which seems a bit lighter than some EB's I've been served (and where's the tomato?).
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Monday 4th September 2017 10:23 GMT Sgt_Oddball
Re: I am Appalled and Outraged!
I would have thought a bacon sandwich or a cup of tea (standards have already been debated and agreed upon) would have been more appropriate, no?
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Tuesday 5th September 2017 11:14 GMT Stoneshop
Re: I am Appalled and Outraged!
Addition to definitions.units:
hamster 1|53 watt
wales 20776980000 m^2
footballpitch 4050.7601 m^2
belgium 30528.33 km^2
congo 2354031.834 km^2
norris 100 N
linguine 140 mm
doubledecker 9.219 m
brontosaurus 138.2851 m
walnut 83776 mm^3
egg_vol 183260 mm^3
grapefruit 523600 mm^3
airbag 575960 mm^3
funbag 1712172 mm^3
football 5796252 mm^3
pool 2502.8677 m^3
jub 4200 g
eiffeltower 7000000 kg
pepcon 2700 ton_tnt
mythbusters_cement_mixer 0.34 ton_tnt
tad 1.25 ml
dash 0.625 ml
pinch 0.3125 ml
smidgen 0.15625 ml
drop 0.078125 ml
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Tuesday 5th September 2017 12:12 GMT Stoneshop
Re: I am Appalled and Outraged!
One unit that is also missing from the Reg Standards Converter is time*. Sticking with a conventional unit until a Reg one comes along, energy could be expressed as hamsterfortnights, with this galaxy emitting 43.816138 trillion trillion hamsterfortnights per burst.
* lunchtime is way too variable, although that can actually be useful on occasion.
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Monday 4th September 2017 08:15 GMT Christoph
It's not aliens
They could communicate locally using far less power. They only need that huge signal if they want to communicate over distances like 3 billion light years.
But just to say "Hello?" "Yes, I hear you" would take six billion years. Who is going to approve the budget for that? It simply does not make sense. A reply coming back after a period longer that the age of our solar system?
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Monday 4th September 2017 08:51 GMT Mage
Re: It's not aliens
I agree, it's not aliens.
I have a longer explanation I've given before as to why Radio Telescopes are great for science but not going to receive Alien transmissions, unless the Alien starship is nearer than the nearest star. Otherwise, we'll spot possible alien life or even their industrial pollution via spectrographic analysis. The James Webb should be a good addition for that search.
I look forward to someone figuring out what FRBs actually are. Though we likely don't want such a generator nearby. Some sort of magnestar is my guess.
An advanced civilisation doesn't even need FRBs for navigation. Pulsars are good for that and can even be used to navigate within our own solar system or the whole galaxy. The missing ingredient is a "starship". A generation ship is feasible but doesn't get the TV ratings.
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Monday 4th September 2017 12:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
It is obviously either
Natural and interesting,
or Alien "warp drive" test failure, no doubt wiping out its own solar system in the process by constantly warping in and out of normal planes of existence in perpetuity bending time back around itself to repeat the test until the end of the universe.
Given its not going anywhere it can't be a normal engine test, and at those energies I would expect their power source to deplete before this many bursts were detected.
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Monday 4th September 2017 12:46 GMT Thomas Steven 1
Doesn't powering down active Alcubierre-White propulsion produce something akin to this
Is it possible that a FRB could be an Alcubierre-White warp drive equipped spacecraft skipping through space/time and taking breaks every 15 minutes to make minimally destructive progress around a galaxy.
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/140635-the-downside-of-warp-drives-annihilating-whole-star-systems-when-you-arrive
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Tuesday 5th September 2017 12:08 GMT johnnyblaze
Radio? Not so sure
Would potentially advanced cvilisations even be using radio? It's an archaic communication method with some massive limitations. Surely they'd be using some form of quantum entanglement communication would be the order of the day - ordering a Maccie D's from the other side of the universe would be easy then.
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Thursday 7th September 2017 06:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Radio? Not so sure
Neutrino laser would work.
Plus any "accidental" interception would look like a big supernova etc.
An interesting possibility is using gravitational waves (namely HFGWs) that only show up at quite high frequencies so you'd need a very sensitive detector.
As it appears LIGO can generate as well as detect long wavelewngth GWs it might be worth launching a "GSETI" project that detects anomalous signals appearing to be mathematical such as sequences of primes in binary.
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