On October 30, 81 years ago, the world witnessed one of the phenomena that has most marked the history of the media and terror in them: “the invasion of the alien army.” For years, mysterious bursts of radio waves from billions of light years away have left scientists on Earth speechless. Although, at that moment, they set their course to definitively hold the great responsibility of the label that already outlined them as the fourth power of society, the radio, this story was guided by something important, the signals emitted millions of years from the Earth. However, science has just refuted that these signals are from aliens or people from another planet.
The terror of invasion, alien signals
Among all unexplained phenomena, fast radio bursts (FRBs) are possibly the most mysterious. These are the most elusive and powerful signals ever detected in space, and although they only last a few milliseconds they can generate the same amount of energy as 500 million suns. Until just a few months ago, no one had been able to find out what was producing these signals, discovered in 2007 and which intrigued the entire community.
Last year something extraordinary happened: Researchers found that at least 16 FRBs came from the same point in space, a single source beyond our Milky Way Galaxy. The confusion was such that several Harvard physicists even proposed that the mysterious signals could be proof of extraordinarily advanced alien technology.
And just a few months ago it happened again. A team of researchers at McGill University has detected another mysterious fast radio burst hitting Earth from an unknown space source. As if this were not enough, this particular burst occurred in the frequency range of 580 megahertz, almost 200 MHz lower than any other recorded so far. What could be the cause of these gigantic flashes? The most recent studies on the subject point to possible neutron stars, but other hypotheses include black holes, pulsars with companion stars, implosions of stellar corpses, or magnetars. Despite everything, nothing is certain.
What we do know is that radio bursts cover a certain range of frequencies, although this latest case shows that the range is greater than previously thought. And they seem to come from very far away, possibly from billions of light years away. And we also know, of course, that whatever causes them, it has to be an extremely energetic phenomenon.
Given this panorama, it is not surprising that last year, after detecting 16 FRBs coming from the same point, something truly unusual, scientists such as Avi Loeb, from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said that “it is worth contemplating and verifying the possibility that its origin is artificial.” However, the same team also postulated the possibility that these were “beams produced by extragalactic civilizations to potentially power ships powered by light sails.” The mystery continues out there.
This story was written in Spanish by Perla Vallejo in Ecoosfera
