AI beats astroboffins at sniffing out fast radio bursts amid the universe's clutter AI is helping astronomers spot fast radio bursts, a mysterious class of signal emitted from a new type of object very rarely found in space that boffins are still trying to classify. Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are difficult to study. They don’t crop up too often - there have only been around 30 confirmed events since their …
Could be either. If a rotating object, or nebula/planetary nebula consumption into a black hole etc, then it's cycle could be studied, and it may just be the others are types without cycles, or who's FRBs subsiquently miss us.
Though as you say, it could also be an entirely different type of object that also gives of FRBs (like the difference between a black hole and a neutron star).
@LenG: Very good point re the difference between the repeating bursts from FRB 121102 and, so it would seem, the single bursts from all of the other FRBs.
FRBs seem to be very distant, generally considered to be in the order of billions of light years away, which makes the energy released from a single FRB considerable, raising the question of where that energy is coming from, and especially so in the case of FRB 121102's repeated bursts.
I can't see FRBs being anything to do with extraterrestrial technology though - such tech would have to be very advanced, to be able to handle the energies, but would also seem to be very inefficient, because we're detecting it - and no, they wouldn't have been focused signals sent intentionally to us because we weren't here billions of years ago.
- and no, they wouldn't have been focused signals sent intentionally to us because we weren't here billions of years ago. ... LeeE
Are you dismissing they be new signals for the Here and Now to Better Comprehend for Greater IntelAIgent Games Play Command and Control?
Such would leave one Absent from Future Virtually Practical Plays ...... on Heavenly AIMissions
And to be sure there be Other Fellow Travellers AIDrivering the ProgramMING ... Reds in the Bed
Приветствую товарища. И сейчас?
Well, "Trump Radio Bursts" are so local it's exciting, but frankly one can deal with only one per day.
Meanwhile from Robert Silverberg's "Tower of Glass"
The room was furnished simply, even starkly: a lengthy rectangle that contained a desk, a data terminal, a small somber sculpture, and a dark drape that would, at the touch of a repolarizing stud, reveal the panorama of New York City far below. The lighting, indirect and subdued, kept the office in
eternal twilight. On one wall, though, there blazed a pattern in brilliant yellow luminescence:
. . . ☆ ☆
. ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
. . ☆ . .
. ☆ ☆ . .
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
. . ☆ . .
. ☆ ☆ ☆ .
. . ☆ . .
It was the message from the stars.
Vargas’ observatory had picked it up first as a series of faint radio pulses at 9100 megacycles: two quick beats, a pause, four beats, a pause, one beat, and so on. The pattern was repeated a thousand times over a span of two days, then halted.
A month later it showed up at 1421 megacycles, the 21-centimeter hydrogen frequency, for another thousand turns. A month after that it came in both at half and at double that frequency, a thousand of each. Still later, Vargas was able to detect it optically, riding in on an intense laser beam at 5000-
angstrom wavelength. The pattern was always the same, clusters of brief bursts of information: 2 ... 4 ... 1 ... 2 ... 5 ... 1 ... 3 ... 1. Each subcomponent of the series was separated from the next by an appreciable gap, and there was a much larger gap between each repetition of the entire group of pulse-clusters.
Surely it was some message. To Krug, the sequence 2-4-1-2-5-1-3-1 had become a sacred number, the opening symbols of a new kabbala. Not only was the pattern emblazoned on his wall, but the touch of his finger would send the sound of the alien signal whispering through the room in any of several audible frequencies, and the sculpture beside his desk was primed to emit the sequence in brilliant flashes of coherent light.
The signal obsessed him. His universe now revolved about the quest to make reply. At night he stood beneath the stars, dizzied by the cascade of light, and looked to the galaxies, thinking, I am Krug, I am Krug, here I wait, speak to me again! He admitted no possibility that the signal from the stars might be other than a consciously directed communication. He had turned all of his considerable assets to the task of answering.
It would appear not - there is a 'frequency dispersion' in the signals that indicates that they are far away.
This dispersion is where the higher frequency portions of a signal arrive before the lower-frequency portions due to the signal passing through a medium, related to the way that 'white' light is split in to separate colours by a glass prism. In this case though, instead of 'light' waves and glass, we've got 'radio' waves and ionized inter-stellar & inter-galactic medium.
So 3 billion light-years away... That means the "signals" left there 3 billion years ago. It might help with understanding the beginnings of the universe but coming from "life" seems unlikely. The SETI is still looking for life and I guess that while this research might give us understanding, it won't help them in their goal to find life. It is a fascinating spin-off project though.
Why would originating 3 billion years ago rule out coming from life? I don't think FRBs have anything to do with aliens, but the universe was well over 75% of its current age 3 billion years ago. Plenty of time for life to have evolved in a solar system that was formed a few billion years before our own.
Indeed not. I still prefer stuff from Interzone or even Lem's His Master's Voice (which is ruined by a contrived ending apparently meant to shovel the problem of Things Actually Are Different Than You Assumed into the reader's face, but what can you do)
https://www.nature.com/articles/4361206a is published in Futures Nature's Science-Fiction section. For real science consult http://search.arxiv.org:8081/?query=FRB&in=.
Surely the least one can do is imagine one can/does .... and to prove the thought so with regular field testing of newly released information for Advanced IntelAIgent Play in NEUKlearer HyperRadioProACTive ITWare Games Trailing and Trialing Quantum Communication Systems of Virtually Real Operation in SMARTR Internet Networks.
Can you imagine them Leading That with Absolutely Fabulous Tales to Follow and Enjoy? Or would that be Certified and Classified Alien?
This isn't Artificial Intelligence (AI) beating astroboffins, what it is, is a pattern recognition engine based on a convolutional neural network (CNN), detecting seventy two new sources of fast radio bursts (FRB) after being trained by humans. As for signs of extraterrestrial technology, since FRB 121102 is three billion light years away, and assuming we detect an artificial signal three billion years old, does anyone think humanity will still exist in three billion (3,000,000,000) years ?
Could the aliens be using a nearby galaxy (more likely several) as gravitational lenses to re-focus and boost the signal?
Think "Gate Bridge" here.
Also relevant: its possible that the "Wow!" signal might have been sent in the same way, possibly from Trangulum or even further afield.
If you think about it using this method means you can ping multiple galaxies from one antenna on say a rotating planet which would be a good way to say "Hi there!" without risking repercussions, due to that most inconvenient speed of light delay.
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