Astronomers Have Traced Mysterious Radio Waves in Our Galaxy
Scientists detected radio waves from billions of miles away. Were these waves from an alien civilization or something else?
Extraterrestrial life is something that we’ve all heard about through movies, comic strips, and toys. From aliens to strange organisms, extraterrestrial life has always been something humans have wondered about. For the longest time, many of us have believed that there was another advanced civilization somewhere in the universe similar to the human race. To date, we haven’t been able to make contact with an alien civilization. Recently, however, astronomers found something promising that could shine some light on this topic.
In April, astronomers detected some strange radio waves. Why are they strange? They didn’t come from humans and they were billions of miles away. Could they really be from another civilization? Let’s find out.
What are these waves?
For around a decade, mysterious flashes from deep space have puzzled radio astronomers. These explosions of radio waves last for just a few thousandths of a second, and they appear to shine from galaxies located billions of light-years away. Researchers have detected about 120 such “Fast Radio Bursts”, or FRBs, to date and have come up with nearly half as many explanations.
Theorists have suggested they could be exotic stars collapsing, neutron stars crashing into black holes, and even alien civilizations pushing starships around on energy beams, but these are all theories. What is the true cause of these waves?
In the past, scientists have only been able to speculate the cause of these FRBs. However, on April 28, the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) — a radio telescope that has led the investigation of FRBs— picked up a radio wave coming from a dense object known to spew X-rays. It didn’t quite reach FRB brightness but seemed energetic enough to be worth a second look. The CHIME team blasted out a notification known as an “astronomer’s telegram” to inform the entire scientific community eagerly hoping for a valid answer.
How were the waves found?
Two different observatories in North America — CHIME in Canada and STARE2 in the United States — spotted this FRB coming from the same part of the sky, strengthening the credibility of the signal. The FRB was also incredibly bright. In fact, a regular cellphone 4G LTE receiver would have been able to pick up the signal coming from halfway across the galaxy, according to Christopher Bochenek, a graduate student in astronomy at Caltech who led the STARE2 discovery team.
“When I looked at the data for the first time I froze and was basically paralyzed with excitement,” Bochenek said during a press call.
The timing and location of the flash lined up with another cosmic event happening nearby. Just a few days before the FRB was detected, astronomers noticed that a known magnetar (a neutron star with a very strong magnetic field) had gotten hyperactive in the sky, sending out X-rays and gamma rays. However, scientists still aren’t sure if these particular FRBs were coming from this magnetar.
What have scientists concluded?
After analyzing the data from the FRB, astronomers at both CHIME and STARE2 confirmed that the radio waves had coincided with a particularly large burst of X-rays from the magnetar. The discovery already made waves in the astronomy community earlier this year, with early scientific reports of the connection posted online and covered in the media.
Over the next month, astronomers continued to monitor the magnetar as it spewed more radio waves, but those follow-up events didn’t match up with any significant radio wave bursts. This burst was still weak in comparison to other FRBs we’ve seen. In fact, it was 1,000 times weaker than the weakest FRB spotted coming from outside our galaxy. Hence, the mechanics at play are still not fully understood.
Because of this investigation into FRBs, astronomers have placed a lot of attention on the magnetars in our galactic group. By taking a look at more magnetars, we may be able to determine if this one event was an offshoot or the final piece of the FRB puzzle.
Although we’ve learned more about what these waves are, it’s a bit underwhelming that they’re not some sort of extraterrestrial life. Nonetheless, this is still a groundbreaking discovery. Magnetars have caused scientists from around the world to realize that such a dense object can send off strong waves from galaxies away. The FRBs that we’ve detected from this particular magnetar have been impressive, and if we continue to research and learn more about them, we will learn more about our universe. We may eventually even find extraterrestrial life, but until then, we will keep pondering.
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