Are Aliens Trying To Contact US? Astronomers Spot Brightest Ever Fast Radio Burst

People are divided between whether or not the mysterious Fast Radio Bursts are signals sent from an advanced alien civilization or a natural cosmic phenomenon.

Now, astronomers have registered another mysterious fast radio burst, and they say it is the brightest on so far.

The enigmatic signal could help astronomers pinpoint its cosmic source and understand what exactly is causing it.

Are FRB signals from an alien civilization?

FRB or Fast Radio Bursts are extremely brief yet extremely bright pulses of radio emissions that have caused confusion among astronomers for more than a decade.

First spotted in 2008, after 11 years, experts have not been able to determine the exact origin of the mysterious radio emissions that only last a few milliseconds.

Astronomers say that their extremely unusual signal strength may help decipher their mysterious origin.

Some have claimed that the signals come from an advanced alien civilization, while others say that the universe is to blame.

The truth is, we still don’t know.

So far, astronomers have managed to detect 33 FRBs since 2007, but two groups of astronomers have uncovered three more mystery signals in the last few days.

The first signals were uncovered by Breakthrough Listen, which looks for signs of intelligent life in the universe.

The second and third signal was spotted by researchers at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia-

All three signals were found thanks to Australia’s Parkes Telescope.

Speaking to the New Scientist about the new FRB signals, Peter Williams, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said: “Finding three this quickly is quite unusual. It seems like it was just luck.”

FRBs are a curious phenomenon.

A message from the stars? Image Credit: Shutterstock.

So far, only one FRB ever cataloged has been detected to flash more than once: an object known as FRB 121102 in a galaxy about three billion light-years away.

However, despite this rare event, astronomers say that other FRBs also flash more times, it’s just that they are too dim for us to see.

However, after the detection of the FRBs in March of 2018, Professor Maura McLaughlin at West Virginia University in Morgantown,

says future detections could be much easier if the repeating FRB hypothesis is correct.

Professor McLaughlin said: “Everyone’s sort of jumping on this bandwagon of looking for FRBs in the background all the time no matter what else is going on. This should lead to a huge uptick in detections in the next year or so.”

Experts from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in March 2017 claimed a solar-powered transmitter using sunlight cast on an area twice the size of Earth could generate enough energy to be ‘seen’ by far away viewers.

Exeperts said that the most readonsable use for this incredilbe amount og enery wuld be to drive intertellar light sails, devices that would rely on a steady beam from the transmitter, allowing ‘alien’ spaceships to mtravel across the universe.

Scientists argue that the so-called FRBs could be evidence of said sails. Observers from Earth only see the brief flash as the sail, its host planet, its star, and the galaxy all move relative to us, making the signal to sweep across the sky, only pointing at Earth for a short moment.

Featured image credit: Shutterstock