Posted on 09/13/2018 8:19:41 AM PDT by ETL
Last year's mysterious outburst of deep-space light flashes was even more frenzied than previously thought, a new study reports.
On Aug. 26, 2017, astronomers with the Breakthrough Listen project — a $100 million effort to hunt for signs of intelligent alien life — spotted 21 repeating light pulses called fast radio bursts (FRBs) emanating from the dwarf galaxy FRB 121102 within the span of 1 hour.
Some scientists think FRBs come from fast-rotating neutron stars, but their source has not been nailed down. And that explains Breakthrough Listen's interest: It's possible that the bursts are produced by intelligent extraterrestrials, perhaps to blast space-sailing craft through the cosmos at incredible speeds, some folks have speculated. (Breakthrough Listen's sister project, Breakthrough Starshot, is developing a laser-based light-sailing system that aims to launch tiny probes toward alien solar systems in the next 30 years.)
And FRB 121102, which lies about 3 billion light-years from Earth, is particularly intriguing: It's the only known "repeater" source of FRBs, which otherwise tend to be one-offs.
In the new study, Breakthrough Listen team members based at the University of California, Berkeley SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Research Center applied machine-learning techniques to the August 2017 data set, which was acquired by the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and was originally analyzed using traditional methods.
The researchers, led by UC Berkeley doctoral student Gerry Zhang, trained an algorithm called a "convolutional neural network" to spot FRBs among the 400 terabytes of data. The strategy is similar to that employed by IT companies to optimize internet search results, Breakthrough Listen representatives said in a statement.
Zhang and his colleagues dug up an additional 72 light flashes, bringing the total number of FRBs detected on that day, from that single source (whatever it may be), to 93.
"Not all discoveries come from new observations," Breakthrough Initiatives Executive Director Pete Worden said in the statement. (Breakthrough Listen is part of the larger Breakthrough Initiatives program, which also runs Breakthrough Starshot, Breakthrough Message and Breakthrough Watch.)
"In this case, it was smart, original thinking applied to an existing dataset," Worden added. "It has advanced our knowledge of one of the most tantalizing mysteries in astronomy."
That mystery remains, of course; we still don't know what FRBs are. But the artificial-intelligence approach employed in the new study could lead to a variety of advances down the road, Zhang said.
"This work is only the beginning of using these powerful methods to find radio transients," he said in the same statement. "We hope our success may inspire other serious endeavors in applying machine learning to radio astronomy."
The new paper has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. You can read a copy of it for free at the Breakthrough Listen FRB 121102 site.
3 billion light-years from Earth = Not walking distance.
Keep the moonbase interceptors on stand-by just in case....
Ignore that “Kepler Search Space” notation in the first image I posted. It was just some random image I found to depict our approximate location in the Milky Way galaxy. Don’t know what it refers to.
Anything with the technology or power to transverse that chasm we do not want here, even if they have a fake birth certificate.
ET left his spaceship turn signal blinkers on, again.
When my brother moved to Alaska talking to him on the phone was difficult because there was a delay. That was very brief but still was a problem. I can’t imagine 3 billion years delay.
That's 3 billion times ~6 trillion miles.
(3 x 10^9) x (6 x 10^12) = 18 x 10^21 = 1.8 x 10^22 miles
“THEY’RE BAAAAACK!”
Better pack a lunch.
+
Mysterious Light Flashes
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“The only true wisdom is in knowing that we know nothing.” That's us, dude!
So how long before the moties get here?
Scoff if you like, but, you know, if those extra-terrestrials were travelling at the speed of light, they'd be getting here just now.
Again, the evil Trump is responsible for these events!
Mysterious light flashes? Somewhere on a distant planet a kid is shinning a flashlight up into the night sky and flicking the on off switch.
JOKE: The astronomy professor was projecting an image of the galaxy nearest to earth. A student raised hand and looking at the screen, asked the professor “And where is the earth”. To which the professor said “Right under your feet.”
Which one???
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