A giant radio telescope in China has caught a repeating signal from the depths of space

We imagine space as dark, coldand a quiet place where there is nothing but an infinite universe around. However, one can argue about the silence of outer space. Thousands of various radio signals travel throughout the universe. Various space objects emit them and most of these signals are nothing more than noise and interference. But among them there are also those that cannot be attributed to interference in any way. And one of these signals was recently recorded by a huge Chinese radio telescope.

Who or what sends mysterious radio signals?

How to catch a signal from outer space?

A few years ago in China they built and launchedfive hundred meter aperture spherical radio telescope (FAST) was put into operation. Since then, a team of scientists began to scan outer space for the subject of “something unusual” and this “something” was not so long ago fixed. Namely, fast radio bursts.

Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are singleradio pulses of a few millisecond duration of unknown nature recorded by radio telescopes. The typical burst energy, according to some estimates, is equivalent to the emission into outer space of the energy emitted by the Sun for several tens of thousands of years. Moreover, fast radio bursts are a rather "young" phenomenon. They were first discovered only in 2007 and their origin is still unknown.

Chinese radio telescope FAST. It was he who once again recorded an unusual radio signal

However, this would not be news, because afterthe discovery of the first radio bursts, scientists began to register them constantly. Each surge is recorded and assigned a number. And here the fun begins. The fact is that the signal detected by the FAST radio telescope, scientists have already recorded. In 2012, a radio burst was found in the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which was designated as FRB 121102. Since then, it was recorded several more times in Arecibo, and now Chinese astronomers have caught FRB 121102.

I do not presume to say that this radio splash -the work of extraterrestrial civilizations. “I just think it's amazing that there is something similar in space,” said astrophysicist Ziggy Pleinis from McGill University in an interview with ScienceAlert. Nevertheless, I think that in the signature of the radio burst very important information can be encoded, which we must try to decrypt.

Radio bursts are aliens?

There is no exact answer at the moment, but allthe available data suggest that these may well be ordinary natural phenomena. If scientists succeed in discovering something, we will immediately report it. And in order not to miss this, subscribe to our Telegram channel. For example, the FAST radio telescope is especially sensitive to radio signals in the frequency range from 1.05 to 1.45 GHz, which makes it ideal for observing FRB 121102. And the more observations we can do, the better our chances are that we can determine exactly what the surge represents, find out its nature and origin. One theory is that radio bursts are produced by the decay of neutron stars.

This is interesting: Mysterious radio signals reached Earth. Who sent them?

Another hypothesis suggests that different inThe frequency of radio bursts has actually different reasons. For example, some stars (like our Sun, but many times more) are able to emit radio waves. However, none of the existing theories explains why some radio bursts like FRB 121102 regularly repeat at the same frequencies and do not change their signature over time. Scientists have yet to solve this riddle.