![]() ![]() In September 2021, scientists said they had detected a mysterious radio signal that appeared to have come from the center of the Milky Way. The overall 16-day-ish cycle could give an important clue to the nature of its source, scientists said at the time. Some of them are one-offs while others repeat.Īn FRB called FRB 180916.J0158+65 was discovered in February 2020, appearing several times per day for four days before falling silent for slightly more than 12 days. These are bright radio bursts that last milliseconds and are speculated to come from high-energy astrophysical processes that are not fully understood. There have been numerous examples in recent years.įast radio bursts or FRBs often catch scientists' attention. Unexplained or unusual signals from space may naturally give rise to theories about aliens or other exotic phenomena. Specifically, one that spins comparatively slowly. The team's leading theory is that the source of the strange signal is a magnetar-a type of neutron star with an extremely intense magnetic field. The low-frequency sky, however, is quieter. Radio signals from space are common occurrences particularly in the high-frequency spectrum due to energetic events like exploding stars. "It was kind of spooky for an astronomer because there's nothing known in the sky that does that," said Natasha Hurley-Walker, an astrophysicist at Australia's Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, in a press release. ![]() Universe Has 40 Quintillion Black Holes, Says Study.Image Shows James Webb Telescope 1M Miles From Earth, Surrounded by Stars.NASA Found Over 5,000 Potential Alien Worlds-Here Are Some of the Weirdest.Other messages meant for other deep spacecraft could be returned from different potential star systems in the 2030s. ![]() If there is a planet around that star (we have yet to spot any), and that planet responded as soon as they got our “message,” we could hear back as soon as 2029. The nearest is a white dwarf star-a tiny, very dense star that can form when a larger star dies-located 27 light years away that may have been hit by a communication sent to a mission called Pioneer 10. The team tracked the signals set out by the DSN and found a few stars that may have been hit by the radio waves. The DSN, on the other hand, was built specifically for long-distance communication, so there’s a much better shot that an alien civilization could read the information contained inside of that signal and realize it is worth responding to. But most of those waves aren’t targeted, and so they spread out into unreadability before they could ever reach an extraterrestrial life form. We do that all the time by just listening to the radio or watching TV. The DSN isn’t the only thing sending out radio signals. The team behind this recent study wanted to see if signals from NASA’s Deep Space Network, or DSN-the super-powered and super-focused radio array used to communicate with deep space missions like Voyager and New Horizons-could have run into any exoplanets by now that might host life. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to playīut it’s not impossible, and for some astronomers, “not impossible” is worth investigating. “The probability that another civilization resides in this tiny bubble is extraordinarily small unless there are millions of civilizations in the Milky Way.” “Our puny and infrequent transmissions are unlikely to yield a detection of humanity by extraterrestrials,” Jean-Luc Margot, a radio astronomer from UCLA, said in a Popular Science article. And apparently, if those stars happen to be home to extraterrestrial life that could respond to our ping, we could be hearing back as early as 2029. The world has gotten especially noisy since we learned how to transmit information over radio waves over 100 years ago.Īccording to a new study, some of the strongest of those radio signals have reached far-off stars. Not just in a city-center noise pollution kind of way, but in more of a “we’re sending all kinds of signals out into space every day” kind of way. The team followed deep-space radio signals to see what stars they hit, and want to use those stars as listening targets to look for evidence of alien civilizations.Įarth is a noisy planet.There is a very low chance of this happening, but it is not impossible. ![]()
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