Alien signals continuously hit Earth every second

Radio bursts continue to be a subject of controversy for scientists, with questions surrounding their origin.

One hypothesis suggests that magnetars with extremely strong magnetic fields are the source of FRBs. Photo: NASA.

Since their discovery in 2001, fast radio bursts (FRBs) have captivated the research community. Astronomers have found dozens of FRBs in the past few years and even speculated about where they originate. However, the cause of these signals remains a mystery. One group of scientists estimated that FRBs shoot out every second across the universe, according to the International Business Times.

Most FRBs are detected only once, as powerful bursts lasting a few milliseconds. One particular burst, FRB 121102, has flashed 34 times since it was first recorded in 2002, allowing astronomers to pinpoint the location of the radio burst to a galaxy three billion light-years away.

In a study published yesterday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, two astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) estimate that FRBs are emitted at a fairly fast rate. “If we are correct about the fast rate of FRBs, you can imagine the sky being flooded with flashes of light, like paparazzi trying to take pictures of celebrities. Instead of light that we can see with our naked eyes, these flashes appear as radio waves,” said Anastasia Fialkov of CfA, who led the study.

Fialkov’s team’s research suggests that FRBs are not as rare as previously thought. “In the time it takes you to drink a cup of coffee, hundreds of FRBs have been emitted somewhere in the universe,” said study co-author Avi Loeb. “If we can learn a fraction of them, we might be able to discover their origins.”

“FRBs are like extremely bright flashes of light that can be observed over large distances. It allows us to study the dawn of the universe in a new way,” said Fialkov.

According to VNE