[Red Badger]

Could the blasts be from neutron stars? (Image: Mark Garlick/SPL/Getty)

Blitzars?..............

[Red Badger]

SPACE PING!..........................

[TexasCajun]

They last about a millisecond but give off as much energy as the sun does in a day, all seemingly in a tight band of radio-frequency wave

Good thing we were not the target.

[OneWingedShark]

[a fool in paradise]

Their source is a mystery, but whatever causes them must be huge, cataclysmic and up to 5.5 billion light years away, says Emily Petroff of Swinburne University in Melbourne, Australia. A top contender is the collapse of an oversized neutron star that should have given way to a black hole long ago, but was spinning so fast that relativity made it seem lighter. But other possibilities include a flare from a magnetar, a type of neutron star with an extremely strong magnetic field.

It's the black box beacon signal from Malaysian Flight 370

[faithhopecharity]

Instructions from his home planet’s galactic invasion control center— being beamed directly into TOTUS.

[katana]

Caught in the act? Seen by us tiny apes now but happened five and half billion years ago? Methinks the statute of limitations has run out.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

[Organic Panic]

[mikrofon]

other possibilities include a flare from a magnetar,
a type of neutron star with an extremely strong magnetic field

Some radio stars with magnetic personalities flare up for a time before burning out…

[NativeSon]

I think that the magnetar and spinning neutron star or pulsar would have a regular interval of pulsing. Even if there are other bodies blocking/bending the EM wave, those would also yield a pattern.

Ejected mass/energy from a collapsing massive star could be seemingly erratic or perhaps released energy from matter pulled into a black hole?

[tophat9000]

Caught in real time????

The article says the source could be up to 5.5 billion light years away

That means it happened up to 5.5 billion years ago.

real time in this case would mean a person was looking at the sensor as it recorded the burst as a pass by the earth vs a person looking at what the sensor recorded after the fact

Either way I don’t think it gives you any particular advantage to have seen the data as it was captured vs looking at the recording of what was captured unless they could have made some real time adjustments to the sensors while it was being captured

[Bigg Red]

Ah, yes, the testosterone-challenged Wolf Blitzer and his patchy little beard that he wears in hopes of camouflaging his lack of a chin. It does not work, Blitz.