The alien signals mystery may finally have been solved.
Some people believe that life exists nowhere else in the universe except here on planet Earth. Others are sure that there must be living creatures including intelligent ones somewhere in faraway galaxies. Both sides of the debate can provide a number of arguments supporting their points of view. But until recently, outer space has been pretty successful at withholding its secrets.
Put on your thinking caps because Perception 9 is bringing you some exciting news from the world of astrophysics that will change your perception.
What makes humankind beautiful is our innate desire to discover the unknown. Our quests and thirsts for knowledge keep us exploring, and look how far it's gotten us already. We have learned a lot about the universe but there's still so much we don't know.
One mystery, in particular, has been tormenting the minds of scientists for years.
In 2007, researchers caught some weird radio signals coming from a place billions of light-years away. And these strange sounds definitely got their attention. The signals weren't the first radio signal scientists ever heard coming from deep space. There's something known as Fast Radio Bursts FRBs and can be described as short pulses of radio flashes arriving from the Galactic outskirts of the universe.
These bursts whose exact sources are completely unknown to us, last a tiny fraction of a second and usually appear alone. They also come at random. So, it's really hard to study them.
But there is one exception.
Out of the 30 known fast radio curses, one keeps flashing again and again and its name is FRB 121102. Why did this exact radio burst mystify the scientists? Their curiosity stemmed from the fact that nobody knew what was producing such repeating sharp flashes. So, they could only come up with different theories which range from colliding stars to artificially coded messages or maybe ET phoning home.
Researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics supposed that the source of these FRBs could be a gigantic transmitter, twice the size of Earth powered by sunlight. A special system using water to cool this device would help it fight the sun's extreme heat. Regarding the need for such a huge amount of power, well, it could move interstellar light sails. The transmitter would send an uninterrupted beam that would drive the sail and we on earth see it only as a series of flashes because our galaxies as well as the sale itself and its mother planet move relative to each other.
This is just one of the theories that have been suggested over a decade. Yet none of them have been proven. But astronomers have recently made an astonishing announcement. They believe that they found the source of the mysterious alien signals FRB 121102.
These unusually strong extragalactic beeps seem to be arriving from a massive black hole or an unprecedentedly powerful neutron star located more than 3 billion light-years from our planet in a potent interstellar Nebula. Whatever and wherever the thing is, it means that somewhere out there in the celestial beyond, there's an incredibly magnetized region with an extreme environment. And this is a unique discovery.
Could it mean that intelligent life exists besides here on earth?
Well, scientists still can't completely reject the albeit unorthodox theory about an alien civilization emitting FRB 121102.
The detection of the first Fast Radio Bursts goes back to 2001 when some data received from Australia's Parkes telescope was documented but simply laughed and neglected in the archives. By the way, the dish of the telescope that caught two signals is 200 feet in diameter and the telescope itself is kind of a celebrity. It played a huge role in getting live images of Apollo landing on the moon in 1969.
In 2007, astronomers were revising the archives and found the documentation of the radio bursts. Since then, over 25 random ones have been recorded but FRB 121102 is unique. Astronomers have already observed as many as 200 high-energy radio pulses emitted by it in just five years of study.
An international research team had been working diligently at the University of California Berkeley to solve the mystery of the signals. They used the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank telescope in West Virginia and Puerto Rico's Arecibo telescope in their research. Still, it was hard work since the radio pulses are quite weak and even the largest radio telescopes in the world have a limited field of view. In other words, you need to be extra lucky choosing the correct time and looking in the right direction.
However, the scientists discovered that the direction and the time coincided. The source of the bursts lies in a star-forming area of a Dorf galaxy and the electromagnetic waves that create the bursts follow an absolutely unique pattern. It means that they originate from a place with a magnetic field that's incredibly strong. Such fields can be found near neutron stars or massive black holes like the ones in the Centers of galaxies.
The thing is that the bursts of FRB 121102 are polarized. It is an effect called Faraday rotation which deforms radio waves if they pass a magnetic field.
To put it in Layman's terms, your sunglasses work the same way by filtering bright sunlight but there's a connection. The stronger magnetic field is the more radio waves twist. As for FRB 121102, the deformation of the waves is unprecedented if we're talking about sources of astronomical radio waves.
This led to the conclusion that the field these signals pass is unbelievably strong. So, the source might be close to a supermassive black hole. Regarding our own Milky Way galaxy, scientists know only of a few sources emitting such twisted signals and all of them are located in the galactic center near a huge black hole. It's an extreme place and the object sending the pulses must be extreme as well.
Astronomers are calling this unique phenomenon one of the greatest mysteries of modern astrophysics.
Jason Hassles, associate professor of the University of Amsterdam and his team of researchers believed that the source of the bursts could be a rotating neutron star whose home is a place with a harsh magnetic environment. For example, a black hole at sucking in dust and gas and therefore still growing.
Neutron stars or magnetars which have a super-strong magnetic field, hence, the name appear as a result of explosions. Imagine a star 10 or even 20 times more massive than our Sun. It bursts in a supernova blowing off its outer layer. This leaves behind a small extremely dense core that keeps collapsing in on itself due to the influence of gravity merging protons and electrons to create neutrons.
Neutron stars are so dense that if you could take just one tiny teaspoon of their matter, it would weigh billions of tons. What's more, such a star has two billion times stronger gravity than we have on earth. Imagine stepping on a weight scale under those conditions. That's why a neutron star is a plausible source of FRB 121102.
The duration of the bursts has a direct connection with the size of the object creating them. The short of the bursts, the smaller the object. That's why a small neutron star with a diameter of 6 miles could easily emit bursts that only lasts a few thousandths of a second.
Another argument supporting this theory is an example we have in our own galaxy. It's an energetic and young neutron star whose radio missions resemble those of FRB 121102. So, the source of the signals could be either a neutron star aka magnetar that interacts with a cloud of particles left after the explosion of the original star or a neutron star that interacts with extremely magnetized winds that appeared due to its rotation.
The astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have been trying to calculate the number of potential FRBs occurring in the part of the universe we can observe. The results are quite shocking. At least one Fast Radio Bursts goes off in some place every second. If they were visible to the human eye, it would look like the whole sky was flashing but instead of flashes, there are radio waves.
If the scientists could catch and record all the fast radio bursts they would probably be able to probe the intervening material across gigantic distances. Careful research of this intervening material would provide us with a better understanding of different cosmic components like ordinary matter, dark energy, and dark matter. It's important as, after all, they affect how fast the universe expands. All in all Hessel compares the radio bursts with flashlights that illuminate for us all the things that we can't see otherwise.
Unfortunately, astronomers haven't yet reached a consensus about the source of FRB 121102. But they still assure us that there are a couple of potential naturals, more orthodox sources that could be emitting the pulses. So, it's probably not about little green men or is it?
Bonus: The sun's influence on our planet
Not all the mysteries of space dwell in faraway places. There are things about our own Sun, we are still learning about. For the first time in the history of astronomy, modern calculations show that changes in solar activity may seriously influence our climate together. With human-induced climate change and natural climate shifts, Earth's temperature largely depends on solar activity. As it changes, so does the intensity of the sunlight that reaches the surface of the earth.
According to scientists, in the next 100 years, the sun's activity will lead to a significant temperature change on earth decreasing it by half a degree.
So, where will it leave us?
Which theory about the origins of Fast Radio Bursts do you believe?
Tell us in the comments below.
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