Fast radio bursts (FRBs) have mystified scientists since their discovery in 2007. Astronomers know they come from distant galaxies, but their potential origins remain a mystery.
Fast Radio Bursts And Sailing Aliens
Now, a new study published by Harvard researchers in the Astrophysical Journal Letters suggests the phenomenon may have something to with sailing aliens.
The researchers suggest the bursts may be leakage that come from planet-sized transmitters whose power could be driving interstellar spacecraft in faraway galaxies. Such instruments could produce powers enough to push a payload of a million tons, which is about 20 times the biggest cruise ships that sail on planet Earth.
"We examine the possibility that Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) originate from the activity of extragalactic civilizations. Our analysis shows that beams used for powering large light sails could yield parameters that are consistent with FRBs," the researchers wrote in their study "'[C]oincidences' lend some credence to the possibility that FRBs might be artificial in origin."
Study researcher Avi Loeb, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said that an artificial origin for the mysterious signals is worth contemplating and checking.
The study suggests that FRBs could be evidence of an advanced alien technology. Besides FRBs, there are other mysterious phenomena in space that some scientists suspect to have extraterrestrial origins.
Dimming Of Tabby's Star
The mysterious dimming of KIC 8462852, also known as Tabby's star, is suspected to have extraterrestrial origins. While there have been several theories that attempt to explain the erratic dipping of the star's brightness, researchers have not discounted the idea of an alien civilization.
A mathematical model presented by Eduard Heindl, from Germany's Furtwangen University, suggests that the dimming could be traced to aliens mining energy from the star since the star gives off jets that can be used as energy source.
"We describe a mathematical approximation to the light curve, which is motivated by a physically meaningful event of a large stellar beam which generates an orbiting cloud," report of the study reads. "The data might fit to the science fiction idea of star lifting, a mining technology that could extract star matter."
Light Pulses From 234 Stars
In a study published in the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific last year, researchers from the Université Laval in Quebec reported of 234 stars of the 2 million stars catalogued by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey that exhibit rapid burst of light.
The researchers said that the spectral modulation, which appears identical across many different stars, is consistent with signals from what could be an alien civilization that send extremely rapid optical pulses, which was predicted in an earlier study published by one of the researchers, astronomer Ermanno Borra. Researchers said that the signals are possibly messages from an intelligent alien civilization that tell us extraterrestrial beings exist.
"The ETI [extraterrestrial intelligence] hypothesis is strengthened by the fact that the signals are found in stars having spectral types within a narrow spectral range centered near the G2 spectral type of the Sun," the researchers wrote in their report. "Intuitively, we would expect stars having a spectral type similar to the Sun to be more likely to have planets capable of having ETI."
