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Earth receiving mysterious radio signals

148 points| q7 | 11 years ago |ibtimes.co.uk | reply

28 comments

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[+] dfryer|11 years ago|reply
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.

[+] dchichkov|11 years ago|reply
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

[+] lotsofmangos|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] uoou|11 years ago|reply
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...

[+] danhon|11 years ago|reply
"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.

[+] sytelus|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] cpncrunch|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] IndianAstronaut|11 years ago|reply
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?
[+] houseofshards|11 years ago|reply
What does the article mean by "fast" radio signals ? Don't radio waves always travel at the speed of light ?
[+] JonathonW|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] gre|11 years ago|reply
They mean the signals last about a millisecond.
[+] capex|11 years ago|reply
First I double checked if 1st April has passed.
[+] tomrod|11 years ago|reply
Much like many things: cool if true, and I wonder what's behind it. (e.g. Bloop, EM Drive, etc.)
[+] modzu|11 years ago|reply
they suggest it could be a cell phone tower :(
[+] soheil|11 years ago|reply
"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.