Astronomers in Australia have picked up an “alien” radio signal from
space for the first time as it occurred. The signal, or radio “burst”,
was discovered on May 15, 2014, though it’s just being reported by the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
“The burst was identified within 10 seconds of its occurrence,” said
Emily Petroff, a doctoral student from Melbourne’s Swinburne University
of Technology. “The importance of the discovery was recognized very
quickly and we were all working very excitedly to contact other
astronomers and telescopes around the world to look at the location of
the burst.”
Emerging from an unknown source, these bursts are bright flashes of
radio waves that emit as much energy in a few milliseconds as the sun
does in 24 hours. “The first fast radio burst was discovered in 2007,”
Petroff tells FoxNews.com, “and up until our discovery there were 8 more
found in old or archival data.” While researchers use telescopes in
Hawaii, India, Germany, Chile, California, and the California Islands to
search for bursts, it is the CSIRO Parkes radio telescope in Eastern
Australia that is the first to catch one as its happening.
The cause of these mysterious signals remains unknown, with possible
theories ranging from black holes to alien communication. However, UFO
hunters shouldn’t get too excited. According to Petroff, “We're
confident that they're coming from natural sources, that is to say it's
probably not aliens, but we haven't solved the case completely. The two
most promising theories at the moment are that these bursts could be
produced either by a star producing a highly energetic flare, or from a
neutron star collapsing to make a black hole. Both of these things would
be from sources in far-away galaxies just reaching us from billions of
light years away.”
Catching the bursts as they happen is key to finding the source, and
though Petroff’s team scrambled upon making their discovery, they didn’t
move fast enough to find the afterglow and pin down the cause. “Finding
one in real-time has been the goal for a while because we would then be
able to act on it and mobilize other telescopes to look that way,”
Petroff says. “We did this in the case of this real-time discovery, but
we didn't get on the target until about eight hours later with other
telescopes, at which time nothing was found.” However, they were able to
eliminate a few possible causes, such as gamma-ray bursts from
exploding stars and supernovae. Also, the team was able to determine
that the source had been near an object with a sizeable magnetic field
from the way the wavelengths were polarized.
While the source of the fast radio burst remains a mystery, the team
remains hopeful that they can learn from their mistakes and one day
solve the case. “All we can do is learn from our experience with this
discovery and create a more efficient system for next time,” Petroff
says. “We still spend a large amount of time looking for fast radio
bursts with the Parkes telescope and the next time we are in the right
place at just the right time, we'll be able to act faster than ever
before and hopefully solve the mystery once and for all!”
Comments
Post a Comment