
Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves, with origins unknown - rdamico
http://news.mit.edu/2020/astronomers-rhythm-radio-waves-0617
======
jrichardshaw
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.

~~~
magicMonkeyPaw
are you looking forward to reading all the crazy people's takes on why it's
actually aliens that you found?

~~~
reedwolf
I haven't seen the original paper (maybe that should've been linked instead?),
but the MIT press release is dripping with "Not it's saying aliens..."
innuendo.

It's kind of hypocritical to use nod-wink-aliens-clickbait to drum up media
attention, then ridicule the first rube who asks if aliens could possibly be
involved.

~~~
jrichardshaw
That's a fair comment. I mostly think the MIT press release is pretty good and
doesn't go down that route, _except_ for the title, which is definitely
hinting at it.

Also agree that it would make sense to replace the link with the actual paper,
or an article about it. University press releases are mostly there to play up
their own contribution.

------
perlgeek
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 life forms.

~~~
dreamcompiler
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.

~~~
hnarn
Are you saying that extraterrestrial intelligence is not “a strange phenomena
perfectly explainable by physics”?

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
There's no evidence extraterrestrial intelligence is a phenomenon at all. [1]

We can worry about whether it's explainable by 21st century human physics when
that stops being true.

[1] Although there is evidence very weird things have happened on Earth, like
the recent confirmation that the US Navy UFO videos are genuine.

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/27/pentagon-
relea...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/27/pentagon-releases-
three-ufo-videos-taken-by-us-navy-pilots)

~~~
acqq
Not weird at all:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7jcBGLIpus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7jcBGLIpus)

Mick West's full playlist with explanations:

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-4ZqTjKmhn5Qr0tCHkCV...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-4ZqTjKmhn5Qr0tCHkCVnqTx_c0P3O2t)

An article mentioning Mick West:

[https://petapixel.com/2020/04/28/that-navy-ufo-footage-
has-a...](https://petapixel.com/2020/04/28/that-navy-ufo-footage-has-an-
optical-explanation/)

[https://petapixel.com/2020/04/28/that-navy-ufo-footage-
has-a...](https://petapixel.com/2020/04/28/that-navy-ufo-footage-has-an-
optical-explanation/)

------
DrBazza
If it's periodic, it's something orbiting something.

If it's powerful enough to be seen 500 million ly away, one of the two
orbiting objects is going to be a black hole.

~~~
BurningFrog
Or one thing rotating.

You can imagine other cyclical processes, but I don't know any are realistic.

~~~
pas
Variable stars, something involving a cyclic phase transition (from silent to
active and back). Something like the Type Ia supernova, where the dense white
dwarf siphons off mass from its companion until it reaches the Chandrasekhar
limit and bang.

------
sradman
arxiv Jan 28 paper "Periodic activity from a fast radio burst source" [1] via
Feb 7 Vice article [2] and Wikipedia "Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping
Experiment (CHIME)" page [3].

[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.10275](https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.10275)

[2] [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxexwz/something-in-
deep-...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxexwz/something-in-deep-space-
is-sending-signals-to-earth-in-steady-16-day-cycles)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Hydrogen_Intensity_Ma...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Hydrogen_Intensity_Mapping_Experiment)

------
savrajsingh
They didn’t mention a simpler solution: random emitter orbits behind something
/ Is occluded for the silent period?

~~~
teraflop
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.

~~~
krapp
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.

~~~
DFHippie
Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!

------
JackFr
> For the most part, these detections were one-offs, flashing briefly before
> disappearing entirely.

I realize there is most likely an explanation that doesn’t require intelligent
alien life, but that screams Dark Forest Theory.

~~~
EamonnMR
We should broadcast the coordinates of a distant star to see what happens.

~~~
vmladenov
There are a lot of cool concepts in those books, but the sophon faster-than-
light communication that props up a lot of the story was a bit too much for
me.

~~~
ganstyles
The theory of quantum entanglement is sound though, and it took a while for a
single sophon to arrive before the FTL communication. Layman here, but I
thought it was relatively had science/speculative fiction.

~~~
mkl
Unfortunately the sound theory of quantum entanglement disallows FTL
communication: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-
communication_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem)

------
aquova
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?

~~~
teraflop
The article suggests it could be a spinning neutron star, which is what a
pulsar is. But a pulsar produces an extremely regular sequence of pulses.
(Well, actually it emits a continuous beam of radio waves, but its rotation
causes the beam to point towards any given observer at regular intervals.)

This article describes a source that seems to start and stop at regular
intervals of several days (much longer than any known pulsar's rotational
period) but within the active intervals, the bursts appear to be random. That
suggests a more complex mechanism is at work.

~~~
rootbear
I just throw some gasoline on the "It must be Aliens!" theory (to which I do
not subscribe!) and point out that heavily compressed data looks random...

~~~
menybuvico
As does encrypted data.

~~~
beamatronic
That’s why somebody needs to send out a sequence of prime numbers

~~~
lumost
What protocol do you use to represent the sequence? Bytes, Morse, Amplitude
modulation, frequency modulation? All of these combinations may appear random
to one without the right codec.

~~~
beamatronic
I wonder if this could be accomplished with a train of satellites. All in the
same orbit. Just spaced out like this:

xx xxx xxxxx xxxxxxx

So they just go around and around, including the light, from the point of view
of a far away perspective

~~~
cgriswald
You would need to set up the satellites in such a way that anyone receiving
your message is viewing their orbits edge on. Your satellites would also have
to be extremely large and fairly close to your host star. And there’d have to
be no dust between your star and the receiver.

As a method to communicate with people you don’t know exist, it’s not very
good because chances are they won’t be viewing your satellites edge on. For
people you know are there, it’s needlessly complicated and expensive.

If you’re going to go to the trouble, you’d be better off making a Dyson swarm
and cloaking your star completely. You’d get energy back and be just as
detectable for a civilization that thought to compare visible and IR sources
(which some Earth scientists have done, with negative results).

------
magneticnorth
Earth has had life for more maybe as long as 4 billion years, and in all that
time there has been less than 200 years when a species had the intelligence,
the motivation, and the technological advancement to send communications into
space.

I know the odds of this being life are (literally) astronomically low, but
every time I hear news like this, I can't help hoping there's another species
out there that found the will & the way to reach out.

~~~
7thaccount
Same feelings. It's never aliens, but it sure would be cool to meet a
benevolent super advanced species or catch an intergalactic soap opera with
octopus people. Really, any indication that we're not alone.

~~~
anoniuyiu33412
We are not :-)

~~~
7thaccount
Given the size of the Universe, I would guess this as well 10/10, but so far
we have zero evidence.

I wonder if we're all destined to stay within our own solar systems due to the
light speed barrier, or if we'll ever figure out how to do FTL or bend space.
It's frustrating that we can't seem to break out of our tiny bubble.

Maybe there is a prime directive that has nothing to do with a species
achieving warp, but instead attempts to see if a species can work together on
a planetary scale to tackle disease, hunger, energy, climate...etc? If so,
we're doing a poor job, but are making progress.

------
cosmic_ape
Isn't it strange that the periods mentioned are integer multiples of _days_?

Don't known much about astronomy, but day as a unit of time is just a constant
specific to our particular solar system. I guess a function of the sizes of
the sun and the planets here. There should be nothing special about it. To
think that 500M light years away there is something that has similar time
proportions to be observed here as periodic is amazing by itself.

~~~
qayxc
The period is 16.35 +/-0.18 days [1] so it's not exactly 16 days. The unit
days is just the next best convenient unit to use for this range of time
scale. 392 hours +/\- 4 hours just isn't as intuitive as 16 days.

So the period is neither an integer multiple of days, nor exactly the same
each time. There's some small variance involved - about 1%.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRB_180916.J0158%2B65](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRB_180916.J0158%2B65)

------
bawana
If aliens did exist, they would probably compress their communications. And
they might use a fault tolerant infrastructure like TCP/IP. In either
scenario, real communications would not be periodic but closer to random
noise. Has anyone performed a Zipf plot or calculated shannon entropy of non-
periodic radio signals?

~~~
Santosh83
Not if they _wanted_ to specifically send out a beacon to other aliens.

~~~
koheripbal
Why would an advanced intelligence advertise its location?

It is a high-risk low-reward strategy.

~~~
EamonnMR
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#It_is_dangerou...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#It_is_dangerous_to_communicate)

------
mef51
The data for this discovery as well as other work from CHIME/FRB is available
here: [https://chime-frb-open-data.github.io/](https://chime-frb-open-
data.github.io/)

------
baxtr
_> This new FRB source, which the team has catalogued as FRB 180916.J0158+65,
is the first to produce a periodic, or cyclical pattern of fast radio bursts.
The pattern begins with a noisy, four-day window, during which the source
emits random bursts of radio waves, followed by a 12-day period of radio
silence. The astronomers observed that this 16-day pattern of fast radio
bursts reoccurred consistently over 500 days of observations._

I wonder how these aliens manage to work only for 4 days and then rest for
almost 2 whole weeks. They must be quite advanced.

~~~
undersuit
Well the aliens producing the Soap being broadcast probably work during the
whole 2 weeks before they release the newest episode.

------
beamatronic
It seems to me there’s no limit to what we can learn by observing outer space.

~~~
anoniuyiu33412
At some point we could be lucky enough to spot some kind of alien ISS orbiting
an otherwise non-interesting planet/moon.

Or some kind of giant vessel arriving to a close star.

Could be no luck at all too.

------
masked_titan
>500 million light years away

How are they able to know how far it's coming from?

~~~
unnouinceput
[https://sciencing.com/calculate-distance-
light-5974042.html](https://sciencing.com/calculate-distance-
light-5974042.html)

------
unnouinceput
Let's run wild some imagination. So 500 million light years as distance,
meaning it started at least 500 millions years ago. Dinosaurs weren't existing
back then. Imagine a civilization which has this energy output that is
detected 500 million light years away. Wasn't some quote where a type 4
civilization technology is indistinguishable from natural phenomenons?

------
squarefoot
Shouldn't they be able to discriminate the type of object (single star with
orbiting planets that obstruct radio waves, or dual star plus planets where
the emitter itself also moves around an orbit) by analyzing the received
carrier frequency and see if it's also modulated by a much lower frequency
(Doppler effect) compatible with orbital motion?

~~~
teraflop
FRBs don't really have a "carrier frequency" in that sense. The radio burst
occurs a broad range of frequencies, which can vary substantially from one
burst to the next (there are graphs of this in the paper linked above). But
there's no sharp peak that can be accurately measured, as far as I know.

And even if there was, we don't understand the mechanism behind FRBs, so we
wouldn't necessarily be able to distinguish a Doppler shift from some other
effect that caused the frequency to change.

------
tartoran
If it’s regular like clockwork it’s nothing but a cog in the universe we’re
looking at, all in all interesting to study. Next irregular signal will be
even more interesting though that does not necessarily imply alien
communication

------
jcims
Does it sound like this?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCkbekhUdw4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCkbekhUdw4)

Yes, you know what it is. :D

~~~
Intermernet
Without clicking on it, my guess is either the signal from Contact, or Rick
Astley.

------
modzu
FRBs seem to make the front page of hn on a repeating cycle too lol

------
nibbula
Sad we won't be able to visit for a least 450 million years. Nice of Canada to
give us all that juicy data.

------
b34r
“It’s like clockwork”. Probably a natural source then

------
m3kw9
Another day, another periodic pulse detected

------
HenryKissinger
Get Jodie Foster in here.

------
zargath
Probably just some aliens from some advanced civilization Far far away.

~~~
bcardarella
And presumably all gone by now

------
historyremade
The search for aliens within aliens just insane. They've communicated with us
for years. The idea itself a communication. It's matter of time until we get
more civilized.

------
anoniuyiu33412
Didn't read the whole thread just yet. but, to the point.

So, it's aliens. what would they possible be communicating?

What kind of information would actually matter to communicate over 500 million
light years?

I bet it would be: a way to reply

I wouldn't bother to try to send intructions for them - us - to build another
500 million light-year capable transmitter,

But maybe, just maybe, they could be sending information for making us able to
build a wormhole.

A we'd know where the other extreme would be located, so we "just" need to
build one and point it to them.

~~~
tpmx
Time to watch Contact (1997) for the 5th time.

