51–60 of 186 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm having a hard time imagining what kind of geometry would cause an orbiting object to be occluded for more than 50% of its orbital period.
Obviously the weird, non-euclidean geometry of some vast and incomprehensible machine built by eldritch abominations. When the stars have properly aligned, we will understand its true purpose all to well.
Since it hasn't come up yet: whenever a new astronomical phenomenon is detected, people think "Aliens!" as the reason. In fact, when the first pulsar was discovered, it was (somewhat jokingly) called LGM-1 for "little green men". I'm sure the news hype cycle will come up with similar ideas this time, and I'm just as sure that we'll find a perfectly reasonable explanation not involving intelligent, extraterrestrial li…
There was a time when people thought a ball of fire moving across the sky every day must be alive. The universe is full of strange phenomena perfectly explainable by physics. This is no different.
It seems like so long ago the paper actually went public onto the arXiv, but I guess the press embargo just ended.
Since it hasn't come up yet: whenever a new astronomical phenomenon is detected, people think "Aliens!" as the reason. In fact, when the first pulsar was discovered, it was (somewhat jokingly) called LGM-1 for "little green men". I'm sure the news hype cycle will come up with similar ideas this time, and I'm just as sure that we'll find a perfectly reasonable explanation not involving intelligent, extraterrestrial li…
There was a time when people thought a ball of fire moving across the sky every day must be alive. The universe is full of strange phenomena perfectly explainable by physics. This is no different.
Also, if an alien happens to be shining a beam at us rhythmically, that's also "explained" by physics but we won't actually know if the source is a natural phenomena or an alien shining his super flashlight at us.
One of paper authors here. I'll try and answer some of the questions in the comments. It seems like so long ago the paper actually went public onto the arXiv, but I guess the press embargo just ended.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some of the earliest radio broadcasts are Hitler's speeches, as well as other world leaders preparing their nations for global conflict. So there's that.
That would be TV broadcasts as I’m guessing everyone here seen Contact. Ironically in 1948 when FM was standardized and countries were assigned spectrums Germany wasn’t really invited as it wasn’t a state for that short period and wasn’t assigned a spectrum so they started broadcasting in VHF because that wasn’t covered by the Copenhagen Agreement. A few years later people realized that VHF was supper efficient for F…
My first thought was that this sounds like a pulsar, and I was surprised to not see that among the list of possible phenomenon. After looking it up, I still wasn't quite sure why these couldn't be pulsars. Is it because the period is much higher than typical pulsars?
The only exception to this is the Crab pulsar, which is observed to occasionally have "giant pulses" which are 1000s of times brighter than a typical pulse. If you put the a somewhat brighter version of the Crab pulsar in an FRB host galaxy at the low end of the known distances, you might just about be able to see it.
One of paper authors here. I'll try and answer some of the questions in the comments. It seems like so long ago the paper actually went public onto the arXiv, but I guess the press embargo just ended.
are you looking forward to reading all the crazy people's takes on why it's actually aliens that you found?
I think astronomers often make it worse. I mean, we like thinking about why things are actually aliens as much as anyone else (LGM1 was already mentioned), and while we mostly try to restrain ourselves, every now and again a famous astronomer breaks and lets out a paper about it.
One of paper authors here. I'll try and answer some of the questions in the comments. It seems like so long ago the paper actually went public onto the arXiv, but I guess the press embargo just ended.