The origin of fast radio bursts (FBRs) have baffled the worlds scientific community for decades now, being one of the obscure and explosive signals ever detected in space last for mere milliseconds and generate energy as that of 500 million Suns.
During the previous year, researchers had discovered 16 FBRs all emanating from the same region just beyond our Milky Way and now Harvard physicists have theorized that the signals could be proof of advanced alien technology.
Theoretical physicist from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, Avi Loeb said, "Fast Radio Bursts are exceedingly bright, given their short duration and origin at great distances, and we haven't identified a possible natural source with any confidence. An artificial origin is worth contemplating and checking."
However, FBRs are not that scarce, the first one was detected back in 2007, according to researchers approximately 2,000 of them light up the universe every day. The quandary seeps in when it comes to the detection and analysis of these signals as they are exceptionally evasive and last less than 5 milliseconds in duration and are exasperatingly random in origin.
Nevertheless, it was not until late 2016, when researchers detected what seemed as a series of first repeating FBRs; 11 high-energy radio bursts all coming from a single source way out into the deep space.
Similarly, earlier this six more of such FBRs were detected being emitted from the same location and researchers managed to track down the pinpoint location to a dwarf galaxy roughly 3 billion light-years away from Earth.
A huge leap forward as all detected FBRs had been of random origins in space.
However, despite finding the first ever-repeating FRBs, collectively known as FRB 121102, no one has been able to provide a convincing explanation for what is causing such powerful outbursts.
The leading hypotheses right now are that these signals arrive from the most unstable and explosive events in the Universe - supermassive black holes coughing up celestial matter; explosions of superluminous supernovae; or rotating magnetars - a type of neutron star that pummels everything around it with intense magnetic fields.
Nevertheless, this is all just speculation, based on the assumption that such powerful signals would originate from the most powerful events we have ever detected.
However, Loeb and his team conclude on an explanation most of the scientific bodies could agree on being that the source of these bursts could possibly not all natural.
"[W]e have posited that Fast Radio Bursts are beams set up by extragalactic civilizations to potentially power lightsails," they stated in a paper.
Lightsails, a technology still in its infancy on Earth holds immense promise to revolutionize space exploration.
Known as 'photonic propulsion' systems, lightsails are powered by the momentum of photons (particles of light), which could either be harnessed from the Sun's rays, like Bill Nye's light sail, or giant Earth-based lasers, like this NASA proposal.
That means virtually zero fuel would be required, and journeys could last as long as the physical parts could hold.
With that in mind, Loeb and his team investigated the possibility that Fast Radio Bursts were coming from an enormous radio transmitter on a distant alien planet, that beams FRB-like signals across the Universe to propel giant light sails.
"Although the possibility that FRBs are produced by extragalactic civilizations is more speculative than an astrophysical origin, quantifying the requirements necessary for an artificial origin serves, at the very least, the important purpose of enabling astronomers to rule it out with future data," the team concludes.
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