FRB 121102 Intense Burst of 15 Weird Signals

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Profile Carlos
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Message 1887207 - Posted: 1 Sep 2017, 3:15:09 UTC

Just reported in Science Alert: "Bursts from this source have never been seen at this high a frequency," said Andrew Siemion, director of Breakthrough Listen, an initiative based the University of California, Berkeley, which detected the signals."

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Message 1887278 - Posted: 1 Sep 2017, 13:48:58 UTC
Last modified: 1 Sep 2017, 13:51:04 UTC

I see that the SETI Institute is using the Allen Telescope Array to look at FRB 121102, also. They are doing so, as I type this. This confirms that at least two independent SETI projects are working under the hypothesis that these fast radio bursts could have an intelligent cause. The odds of this being the case are apparently considered good enough to justify the effort.
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Message 1887288 - Posted: 1 Sep 2017, 14:50:54 UTC - in response to Message 1887207.  

Just reported in Science Alert: "Bursts from this source have never been seen at this high a frequency," said Andrew Siemion, director of Breakthrough Listen, an initiative based the University of California, Berkeley, which detected the signals."
Was this Seti@Home related?

You can find Andrew Siemion involved in the Seti@Home project anyway.
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/sah_about.php
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Profile Carlos
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Message 1887378 - Posted: 1 Sep 2017, 21:10:55 UTC - in response to Message 1887288.  
Last modified: 1 Sep 2017, 21:13:39 UTC

Just reported in Science Alert: "Bursts from this source have never been seen at this high a frequency," said Andrew Siemion, director of Breakthrough Listen, an initiative based the University of California, Berkeley, which detected the signals."
Was this Seti@Home related?

You can find Andrew Siemion involved in the Seti@Home project anyway.
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/sah_about.php

Yes I read his paper before. I know the name but I don't think Eric ever introduced us.

It looks like a Harvard Grad student has been looking at these for over a year now.
Law, Casey, 2016, "The Sound of Fast Radio Burst FRB 121102", doi:10.7910/DVN/QSWJE6, Harvard Dataverse, V1
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Message 1887629 - Posted: 3 Sep 2017, 2:07:38 UTC
Last modified: 3 Sep 2017, 2:09:18 UTC

Breakthrough Initiatives release


Breakthrough Listen Detects Repeating Fast Radio Bursts from the Distant Universe

Green Bank Telescope observations of a dwarf galaxy three billion light years away reveal 15 bursts of radio emission. This is the first time bursts from this source have been seen at these frequencies.

San Francisco – August 29, 2017 – Breakthrough Listen – the initiative to find signs of intelligent life in the universe – has detected 15 fast radio bursts emanating from the mysterious "repeater" FRB 121102. Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are brief, bright pulses of radio emission from distant galaxies. First detected with the Parkes Telescope in Australia, FRBs have now been seen by several radio telescopes around the world. FRB 121102 was discovered in 2012, on November 2nd (hence its name). In 2015, it was the first FRB seen to repeat, ruling out theories of the bursts' origins that involved the catastrophic destruction of the progenitor (at least in this particular instance). And in 2016, the repeater was the first FRB to have its location pinpointed with sufficient precision to allow its host galaxy to be identified. It resides in a dwarf galaxy about 3 billion light years away from Earth.
....

Has also been picked up by several newspapers. But of course, only time will tell if it amounts to anything (at least that this project is looking for.)
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Message 1887656 - Posted: 3 Sep 2017, 8:16:46 UTC - in response to Message 1887629.  

Was the signal itself recorded; or only it's amplitude? If it were recorded then what is it's content--any modulation ?
Why is there always a lack of specificity in these "WOW" type signals ?
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Message 1887683 - Posted: 3 Sep 2017, 13:23:43 UTC

The more FRBs detected the more I think that the "WOW" signal was a non-repeating FRB.
Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?
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Message 1887687 - Posted: 3 Sep 2017, 13:27:35 UTC - in response to Message 1887683.  

The more FRBs detected the more I think that the "WOW" signal was a non-repeating FRB.


The WOW signal lasted the entire 72-second duration of the aperture, whereas FRBs are transients in the millisecond range.
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Message 1887690 - Posted: 3 Sep 2017, 13:38:13 UTC - in response to Message 1887662.  

Because William it is 99.999% likely that they are of natural origin.


Yes that's probably true but I would like to see a report such as: " that a burst of transmitted "signal" was observed and upon examining it for content was found to contain no modulation or other information to indicate other than a natural phenomenon of unknown origin. Scientists and astronomers are uncertain as to what kind of cosmic events could account for this type of Burst transmission. Bla Bla Bla "
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Message 1887693 - Posted: 3 Sep 2017, 13:57:46 UTC

The linked Science Alert article reports that 400 Terabytes of data were collected, so everything that could be recorded about this phenomenon , very likely was. One imagines it could take some time to analyze this amount of data. The article also notes that a paper by Siemion , et al, is forthcoming, the reviews of which could be expected to take some additional time, before it is published.
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Message 1887701 - Posted: 3 Sep 2017, 14:24:26 UTC - in response to Message 1887696.  

+1

But, scientists and astronomers have to earn a living, and put food on the table, just like anyone else. They are not likely to say "nothing to see here folks, please move on".

The whole shebang is almost self perpetuating.

All it will take is one thinking outside the box & coming up with solutions to many of today's scientific problems. How many Scientists & Academics over the past couple of centuries been ridiculed only to be proven right?

Too many people today have closed minds & too set in their ways to accept anything outside of their "little" box.
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Message 1887702 - Posted: 3 Sep 2017, 14:32:18 UTC

The Square Kilometer Array when 10% completed will produce 300 PB of data/year, 50% more that the seven years of LHC processing. The SKA director has already signed an agreement with CERN to be able to process its data on the CERN Grid, which extends to many countries.
Tullio
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Message 1887705 - Posted: 3 Sep 2017, 14:47:48 UTC - in response to Message 1887703.  

Yet he refused quantum mechanics, probably for theological reasons. God does nor play dice, he said. His God was not the God of the Bible, but the God of Spinoza, the Great Architect of the Universe.
Tullio
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Message 1887707 - Posted: 3 Sep 2017, 14:51:10 UTC

I attribute all of Einstein's accomplishments to his cat, Tiger.
"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."

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Message 1887709 - Posted: 3 Sep 2017, 14:58:42 UTC - in response to Message 1887703.  

Albert Einstein didn't so much think outside the box as just being far ahead of his time in scientific thinking. There is a subtle difference which not all can see. Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519) was another one.
Agree totally, but as I stated some scientists & Academics received no public funding or recognition. Some did so only after their deaths.

One of the best that I studied for the theory side of Metalwork in school (selected the Space Race) was Robert H Goddard, now recognised as the one who ushered in the Space Race.
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Message 1887712 - Posted: 3 Sep 2017, 15:10:33 UTC

I have personally known two Italian scientists who had amply deserved a Nobel Prize but did not get one, Giuseppe "Beppo" Occhialini, an experimenter, and Tullio Regge, a theorist.
Tullio
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Message 1887714 - Posted: 3 Sep 2017, 15:24:41 UTC

The favorite explanation for Fast Radio Bursts seems to be magnetars, super-magnetized versions of ordinary pulsars. Like pulsars, these spin rapidly, with periods of around 1 to 10 seconds. Breakthrough Listen reportedly observed the star for about 5 hours. They heard, we're told, 15 pulses in that time. Since there are 1800 ten second periods in five hours, are we justified in wondering what became of the other 1785 pulses? Perhaps that question is part of the reason why at least two independent SETI projects are taking an interest in this FRB.
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Message 1887740 - Posted: 3 Sep 2017, 16:40:07 UTC

Maybe their spin axis is not aligned with the magnetic axis, so there is a wobble and the radio emission is not always in our line of sight. This is an attempt to explain things.
Tullio
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Message 1887820 - Posted: 4 Sep 2017, 2:26:55 UTC
Last modified: 4 Sep 2017, 2:27:27 UTC

Perhaps that's what's happening. I was struck, though, by the observation that more pulses were seen in a much shorter period of time, than in the past. 14 of the latest ones were apparently spread over a period of only around 70 milliseconds. An additional one was apparently seen somewhere within the 5 hour observation window.

Unless precession carried the beam away from our view after 70 milliseconds, and brought it back again within 5 hours, it's difficult to see what became of the pulses within that gap. If the precession rate really were less than five hours, it seems that this fact would have become clear before now.
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Message 1887860 - Posted: 4 Sep 2017, 10:21:34 UTC - in response to Message 1887820.  

Perhaps clumps of material are falling onto the magnetar and generating the bursts, or some other chaotic process that gives irregular bursts of activity?
If it was instead an ETI beacon, you might expect it to have a more regular output.
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