Powerful Radio Signal from Deep Space

https://www.sciencealert.com/periodicity-has-been-detected-in-a-repeating-fast-radio-burst

by enigami • 6 years ago

77 51 6 years ago

Just imagine one day a true alien signal comes ringing, and what the public reaction would be? "Yeah, right. Again."

jonny383• 6 years ago

I guess it would depend how compelling the signal was. If it's just rogue radio waves with seemingly intelligent structure that the average person cannot understand, then the reaction would likely be "Yeah, right. Again".

If it's some kind of encoded message containing information that can be decoded and verified by scientific communicators, perhaps not.

techopoly• 6 years ago

That's the problem, isn't it? How can we decode a theoretical alien transmission without transposing our own sense of meaning onto it?

It's like the X-Files episodes where they find the aliens are using encodings that were designed in modern history by humans. Binary (as if there is one standard binary), bar codes... These scenes are supposed to be huge revelations, but for any sort of programmer or engineer, they seem silly. Which wouldn't be so if they made a point about how the aliens are intentionally using our encoding systems, but that's not how it's presented.

Not hating on the X-Files though, that show is awesome.

swsieber• 6 years ago

If I were in charge of broadcasting a communication signal into space, I'd make it a very obviously square wave, or something else that doesn't usually occur on its own. So it really depends on if the signal was meant to be seen as a discovery mechanism.

Koshkin• 6 years ago

A hostile invasion that follows will be the ultimate proof.

martin_a• 6 years ago

Don't worry, it will most probably be limited to the USA. Aliens always land there.

agoodthrowaway• 6 years ago

One thing that I wonder is whether we could ever identify an alien communication signal as an alien signal is likely to be much more advanced. In that scenario, the alien civilization is likely to be able to send their signal at the Shannon limit. Additionally an advanced civilization is likely to be sending signals optically instead of over radio waves. But even if we assume radio waves, Shannon says that the you can send the most information when using a random code. As you approach the Shannon limit the signal becomes more noise-like as the encoding tends towards random. So it’s entirely possible an alien signal is likely to look like pure noise to us and hence we may miss a true alien signal.

dvh• 6 years ago

It's too short for communication. I think it's burst of particles that are released when spaceship goes out of warp.

https://www.universetoday.com/93882/warp-drives-may-come-wit...

16 day regular cycle is because it's regular transfer between two planets. Other FRBs are random because they are just random ships on random research routes.

PappaPatat• 6 years ago

I am going to frame your answer.

gchokov• 6 years ago

Love your comment. Sudden daydreaming for me.

syshum• 6 years ago

Or they are heading straight for us but can only stay in warp for 16 days at a time.

yumraj• 6 years ago

Damn, those are some punctual aliens, never early or late.

rtkwe2• 6 years ago

Hah inevitably any type of FTL or even near light travel seems to inevitably also make an incredibly powerful weapon. This is even better because it doesn't require crashing the vessel into anything to destroy it.

jacobush• 6 years ago

Except beacons of some sort. I could imagine practical benefits to not put a lot of information in there.

mdiesel• 6 years ago

I really like this view on the incompressibility of a uniform distribution.

However, the channel is probably not the same. Just as we moved from AM to FM, I'd expect then that a more advanced civilisation can make further improvements by changing the channel rather than the encoding, and maybe information encoded in the spin of particles or some other funky physics effect.

Ultimately, whilst the encoding will approach a uniform distribution, it seems like bad design for them to have an entire signal indistinguishable from background radiation, which is something they have to overcome as well.

jcims• 6 years ago

Plus dispersion of the signal would smear the modulation quite a bit, possibly making it even more difficult to detect and decode.

zenmaster10665• 6 years ago

if they are sufficiently advanced, they would likely understand that other civilizations require primitive bands/encoding?

Tepix• 6 years ago

It could be considered a clue check. If you're unable to recognize and decode the signal, you failed the test.

willis936• 6 years ago

Humans are not “advanced” in this context yet we already operate at the Shannon limit. Our channels are pristine compared to interstellar space. In order to send any information at interstellar distances you either need AGN levels of power or to slow your signal rate many orders of magnitude.

ngneer• 6 years ago

Speaking of Shannon, unless we were the intended recipient, wouldn't an advanced civilization protect the transmission, so that we would not be able to eavesdrop and/or interpret it?

richk449• 6 years ago

But even if we assume radio waves, Shannon says that the you can send the most information when using a random code. As you approach the Shannon limit the signal becomes more noise-like as the encoding tends towards random.

The waveforms we currently use for high data rate communications are already pretty close to the Shannon limit. I'm willing to bet the aliens will tolerate a 30% reduction in data rate if it means using an identifiable signal.

Does Shannon's theorem really imply that the closer an information stream is to the limit, the more it resembles noise?

zh32• 6 years ago

There's a simple proof of this; an optimally compressed signal will have all symbols occuring with equal frequency (otherwise you'd be able to compress it more). So yes, an optimally compressed signal is indistinguishable from noise.

However that's the theory; in practice the range of frequencies the signal occurs over and how strong it is at each frequency tells you a lot about whether it's likely to be an information carrier or not.

anonsivalley652• 6 years ago

Let's apply common sense.

0) First, would it be a good idea to announce your world's existence? Robotic explorers who might exist in your neighborhood might decide your world is worth harvesting or colonizing.

1) If yes, then wouldn't sending a high-power announcement signal need to be obviously unnatural, i.e., containing very little data? Short trains of pulses with pauses that count up in binary perhaps?

1.1) "Visible light" seems like an anthropocentric assumption because there's not necessarily a reason other entities couldn't sense microwaves, IR, UV or even possibly fissile radiation. Furthermore, cybernetic "evolution" seems like there would be many possibilities for different senses. Maybe there is something particular efficient about the visible spectrum, such as polarized laser light remaining distinguishable extreme distances?

2) If said entity wanted to send a little more data as well, wouldn't they use a slightly different carrier or modulation but it wouldn't necessarily reach as far? Or, send it, as mentioned, more slowly?

pgt• 6 years ago

For those wondering about random codings, see Fountain Codes: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_code

The military implementation is called Raptor Code (rapid tornado codings): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_code

ryanmercer• 6 years ago

One thing that I wonder is whether we could ever identify an alien communication signal as an alien signal is likely to be much more advanced.

This has always been my thing.

Scientists: "Well we've been listening for radio signals but haven't heard anything yet!"

What if they discovered radio but decided it was way too easy for others to spy on it, and be detected off planet, so they just used wired connections for everything eventually moving to 99.9999999% efficient fiberoptics and then when they became a multi system empire, after discovering jump-space, they just switched to using fast messenger probes that could pop in and out of a system and carry large amounts of data to be tightly beamed to and from planets via laser.

Or what if they don't use radio because they began exploiting the Glarfnuralka stream for FTL communications via their subspace ansible implants 50 years after they discovered radio waves?

What if there's something,just right there that we've yet to discover that is far more efficient for communications from an energy standpoint? We discovered radio waves 150ish years ago, we detected the first gravity wave less than 5 years ago. What if it takes us another year, another 1,352 years, to discover Glarfnuralkians and develop a way to reliably transmit and receive data streams in that stream?

Or what if Glarfnuralkians are also considered to be primitive and inefficient due to the limited number of effective channels in the stream and the fact that random bits of the data area always lost no matter what and that the nearest intelligent hegemony is instead using Glurrybluron entanglement to transmit in real time between dedicated units that involve some cesium clocks, some variety of variable gravity lock, proper magnetic containment chambers for dual singularities (and we're talking relatively small singularities here, if your containment chambers are advanced enough you can get this thing down to a backpack sized device), an adequate power source (probably some sort of zero point module that draws from the quantum foam between universes), a way to inject electrons into the containment chambers and sufficient computational power from some universe-on-a-chip quantum ASIC.

Or maybe they're just really into face to face communication because of some sort of cultural/religious custom.

There is also the possibility a sentient species could have sensory organs that involve part of the radio spectrum which would likely prevent them from adapting radio communications.

They could be a species that uses chemical communication, not unlike many insects. You could theoretically convey large amounts of data this way with a moderate amount of evolution.

Keyframe• 6 years ago

Considering we don't have data to sample from, we have no idea what 'likely' is; That is the greatest challenge if "they're out there". We have no idea what to look for, because all we know about is from our own way of doing things.

giantrobot• 6 years ago

The inverse square law pretty much guarantees we're not going to ever detect random emissions from some alien civilization. The only way to get discernible signals an interstellar distance is with highly directional transmissions. So if we were to ever detect a signal from an alien civilization it would be a deliberate one.

There's properties of coherent signals that would stand out significantly from natural sources. Even if the message looked like noise the properties of the signal would give it away as being artificial.

A directional signal would be a point source so a simple off-axis check of the receiver would tell you if it's a distant or local signal. In order to maximize ERP a signal would also likely be a very narrow bandwidth. If we have a long enough sampling of a signal it'll also show distinct Doppler effects of coming from a rotating planet in orbit around a star. An intelligent civilization would also likely use some universal mathematical properties in the chosen frequency.

A signal, even one densely coded with information, would stand out against the background of space. Even if it appeared as noise due to dense information coding it would still have a narrow bandwidth, likely some non-natural mathematical properties, and come from a source that isn't some type of known magnetically active phenomenon (pulsar etc).

A signal deliberately sent to other stars is more likely to look like the Arecibo signal than WiFi. It would take an infeasible amount of energy, enough to vaporize the transmitter, to send a densely coded wideband signal that would be intelligible a handful of light years out let alone dozens or hundreds.

sliken3• 6 years ago

Depends what you call a signal. Imagine the earth was just a bit more focused on science, united, and thought a bit longer term (on the order of 100k years). Living sustainable, but curious and motivated to explore.

Imagine an earth where literacy, science, and peace were priorities. All countries joined a UN like organization and decided to spend 1% of the planets resources on exploring.

Assuming earth level tech and the next 1000 years of progress (.000007% of the life of the universe) we manage a ship/converted asteroid/similar that can travel for 500 years at 2% of the speed of light with some combination of power solar power lasers orbiting the sun, solar sails, nuclear power (ion, explosion and/or pulse), or antimatter. That gets us to the nearest 10 stars. Hard to say what earth technology will be like in 1000 years, but no new physics are needed. Would that be a huge ship with kitchens, gyms, entertainment etc? Or maybe just some autonomous AI with some genetic samples, some robots, and a 3d printer?

After another 1000 years things have improved further, and slowly spreading across the galaxy at a few % of the speed of light becomes ever more practical. Maybe just enough so that a 2nd solar system in the galaxy an start launching ships. Said 2nd solar system could make it dramatically easier for travel between those two systems since they could use a laser to help decelerate the incoming light sails.

Those huge solar arrays + lasers for pushing a large ship up to a few % of the speed of light make for a hell of a beacon. Even unintentionally it should be visible from quite a distance, even by astronomical standards. A ring of solar panels near a sun could provide considerably more power than is available on earth today, even crazy inefficient things like producing antimatter might become viable. Things like geo-engineering become feasible, some distant civilization might detect things like an implausibly quick change in the atmosphere of mars. Or unusually energetic particles coming out of ships trying to accelerate or decelerate to a few % of the speed of light.

As technology progresses we might even be able to focus the energy coming from the sun more directly to directly push ships to other stars. After all solar power -> laser is horribly inefficient.

Distant observers on the same plane as our solar system might even start to notice the particular pattern caused by the solar/whatever energy collection.

Earths atmosphere might start to exhibit unusual characteristics. Even nuclear propulsion becomes common and we start mining the outer reaches of the solar system that might exhibit some unusual characteristics.

Of course any similar civilization in the galaxy could similarly expanding and eventually the two civilizations would get close enough to notice each other, even without deliberate signals.

rtkwe2• 6 years ago

Incidental transmissions sure but intentionally sent signals would by design avoid going too close to that limit, at least for the preamble that describes how to decode the normal transmissions.

lovelearning• 6 years ago

More like "powerful radio emissions from deep space". The paper doesn't use the term "signal" at all, and a website dedicated to science probably shouldn't have either (although it did help bait my click).

thdrdt• 6 years ago

I think the click-bait title is the reason why most comments here are about aliens.

Also because it has a set interval. People like to assume there is some intelligent life form that trigger the events.

But on our own planet we have geysers that erupt at set intervals. All without the help of an intelligent life form.

So I think it's more likely that it's a natural phenomena.

bitminer• 6 years ago

FRBs are chirps. Something like a "signal". Much more signally than the hiss from stars and galaxies.

runawaybottle2• 6 years ago

What could create a natural radio signal in space?

Edit: I should have done some basic googling, turns out a few things:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_radio_source

magduf2• 6 years ago

Magnetars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar

sizzzzlerz• 6 years ago

The real question you should be asking is what doesn't. Radio signals are generated in many ways at frequencies up and down the spectrum.

pledess• 6 years ago

Alternate explanation: there really aren't 12 silent days. They have (in effect) a directional antenna that happens to be aimed at us on the 4 other days. When it's not aimed at us, the signal is way below what https://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/en/effelsberg can detect.

HoustonRefugee• 6 years ago

Intergalactic numbers station!

magduf2• 6 years ago

Didn't we see a movie about this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(1997_American_film)

Angostura• 6 years ago

an alien signal is likely to be much more advanced.

... and therefore they will probably think to themselves 'maybe we shouldn't talk too fast and say things as simply as possible... if we want to increase the likelihood of being understood'.

sixdimensional• 6 years ago

Sci fi daydream here.

What would it take for us to actually try to make such a signal ourselves in space? Really huge explosions? I suppose one weird way to see if they could be alien signals is see if we can imitate them.

Of course, that would be no guarantee that we aren’t just making bird calls imitating the sounds of car alarms (or other birds for that matter). But, I mean, if we can detect these signals, if we could generate one, maybe some other civilization would too. And if we proved that any civilization of a certain state could use the same technique, it would at least lend more probability to the possibility that these are something not natural phenomena.

And who knows, when the alien armada invasion force shows up, you’d know for sure it worked! Ah, such reckless abandon.

_11002• 6 years ago

The Three Body Problem is a first-contact trilogy of books that starts just like this:

Someone ponders what the most powerful thing in our area is (the sun) and then finds a way to influence it just enough so that it can send repeating signals. From there the alien armada heads our way and sets up the plot of the rest of the trilogy!

runawaybottle2• 6 years ago

Would it really take an Armada? Coronavirus infected 40k people, we have some of these viruses in labs. I’d send one agile team and drop a nice virus on Earth (minimal viable product).

sliken3• 6 years ago

Well 1 watt across 1 Mhz for 1 second isn't a particularly power signal.

But 1 watt across 1 hz for 1 ns is a significantly more power signal that will propagate much better. In fact it's about 1e+15 times easier to detect. Hrm, maybe it's more like log(1e+15), but in any case it's quite helpful.

If we can get space based manufacturing working well we could start making solar powered lasers that orbit the sun. Ideally with a bot that self replicates. Say relatively small panels like 2 meters by 2 meters = 5444 watts (near earth orbit). Assume a 20% conversion ratio and some kind of energy storage. Maybe operate for a 1 ns per 10 minutes on a very narrow frequency with a particular target in mind. Time them all to transmit precisely so that the wave front reaches the target at precisely the same time.

5444 * 10 = 54,444 watt minutes * 20% conversion = 10,888 watt minutes. Released in 1ns would be as bright as 653,280,000,000,000 watts steady state. Obviously there are efficiencies and physical limits to consider. Although maybe not as much as you might think. For instance the worlds brightest laser is already 1 billion times brighter than the surface of the sun. Maybe settle for 1,000 times dimmer, but 1 million of them.

Make a few 1000 or a few million and you could easily outshine the sun for 1ns in a particularly narrow frequency. Ideally a frequency with minimum background noise and minimal absorption in the nearby interstellar mediums.

The system could also act as a defense system. Although given the solar -> energy storage -> laser inefficiencies not sure if the single frequency of the laser would be more effective than just a mirror.

Maybe count up the first 16 primes repeatedly to rule out any natural causes.

The three body problem uses some implausibly small amount of energy to get the sun to resonate in a way detectable from many light years away. Not sure that could work, but maybe a million sats could reinforce a natural resonance in the sun to accomplish similar. That would only be worth it if the sun acted like amplifier and not sure that's feasible.

mothsonasloth• 6 years ago

Just think, whether this is an alien device or a quasar / celestial body outputting this energy.

It is a truly terrifying level of radiation. I wouldn't like to be a planet in a solar system near the origin of those bursts.

Powerful Radio Signal from Deep Space

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