$100 Million E.T. Hunt Spots 15 Mysterious Light Flashes

space.com ^ | August 30, 2017 | Mike Wall

[BenLurkin]

A $100 million search for intelligent aliens has spied 15 bizarre, repeating flashes of light coming from a distant galaxy.

The galaxy — a dwarf known as FRB 121102 that lies 3 billion light-years from Earth — is a known source of such brief, high-energy fast radio bursts (FRBs). But the newly detected pulses stand out, astronomers said.

"Bursts from this source have never been seen at this high a frequency," Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement.

Some researchers think FRBs — which were discovered in 2007 and remain mysterious today — could be such alien signals. For example, astronomers have speculated that FRBs may be generated by powerful lasers designed to blast alien craft through space at high speeds — a propulsion method akin to that being developed by Breakthrough Listen's ambitious sister project, Breakthrough Starshot. (Aliens aren't the only possible explanation, of course; some scientists think FRBs are likely emitted by fast-rotating neutron stars, for instance.)

So, FRB 121102 — which, as its name suggests, was discovered on Nov. 2, 2012 — was a natural target for the Breakthrough Listen team, researchers said. The scientists, led by Berkeley SETI Research Center postdoctoral researcher Vishal Gajjar, detected the 15 new pulses on Saturday (Aug. 26) using the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia.

"As well as confirming that the source is in a newly active state, the high resolution of the data obtained by the Listen instrument will allow measurement of the properties of these mysterious bursts at a higher precision than ever possible before," Gajjar said in the same statement.

[Bob Celeste]

"A guy a my church once asked me, “Maybe the universe just looks older than it is. Don’t you believe God could create the light on its way here from the stars?”

And I said, “Sure He could. But why?”"

I agree, yes God can, but why would He?
Perhaps so that we could see the magnitude of His creation? I don't know, Scripture seems to be silent on that possibility.

[Molon Labbie]

There are no space faring races.

Life, almost certainly.

Intelligent species, maybe.

But those that cross interstellar distances, I don’t think so or they would have colonized the cosmos by now.

[Mr. Jeeves]

Their detection of space signals is far superior to ours, but they still can’t waste energy just hunting.

Taking that a step further, they probably don't need to travel long distances in space just to eat strange proteins. :)

They wouldn't bother contacting us or replying unless they thought we had something of great value to them.