An FRB is an acronym coined by astronomers for fast radio burst. Since recent observations of our cosmos began with super-powerful telescopes only 17 such FRBs have ever been observed. These events last a mere handful of milliseconds but produce the equivalent power of around 100 million suns.
Two theories for these FRBs are relatively mundane. One theory proposes that FRBs are generated by powerful magnetars — highly magnetized, fast-rotating superdense stars. A second theory suggests that a FRB is a created by an especially exotic type of black hole.
And, then, there is a third, more fascinating, theory — that FRBs are the result of alien spaceship propulsion systems.
From the Economist:
Similar unrepeated signals have since been noted elsewhere in the heavens. So far, 17 such “fast radio bursts” (FRBs) have been recognised. They do not look like anything observed before, and there is much speculation about what causes them. One possibility is magnetars—highly magnetised, fast-rotating superdense stars. Another is a particularly exotic sort of black hole, formed when the centrifugal force of a rotating, superdense star proves no longer adequate to the task of stopping that star collapsing suddenly under its own gravity. But, as Manasvi Lingam of Harvard University and Abraham Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics observe, there is at least one further possibility: alien spaceships.
Specifically, the two researchers suggest, in a paper to be published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, that FRBs might be generated by giant radio transmitters designed to push such spaceships around. With the rotation of the galaxies in which these transmitters are located, the transmitter-beams sweep across the heavens. Occasionally, one washes over Earth, producing an FRB.
Read the entire article here.
