Mysterious fast radio burst signal that could be evidence of an advanced alien civilisation is spotted further from Earth than EVER before

As mystery about the universe continues, the idea that aliens are sending out fast radio bursts (FRB) is extremely tantalizing.

These strange signals were first discovered 15 years ago, but experts have no idea how or why they appear.

But what they now know is that fast radio bursts can be used to measure “missing” matter between galaxies, which is particularly exciting because it offers us a new way to “weigh” the universe.

The discovery came after astronomers discovered the most distant and powerful FRB ever detected, which came from a galaxy so far away that it took eight billion years to reach us.

The mysterious signal may have lasted less than a millisecond, but it released an enormous amount of energy, equivalent to the total emission of our Sun over 30 years.

Is there anyone there? A mysterious fast radio burst (FRB) signal has been detected that could be evidence of an advanced alien civilization farther away from Earth than before. This artist’s impression (without scale) shows the path of fast radio bursts from its distant galaxy to Earth in the Milky Way

When it comes to estimating the mass of the universe, one of the biggest problems is that current methods have produced conflicting results.

Some are even challenging the standard model of cosmology: just last month, astronomers were left scratching their heads after research found that our galaxy could be one-fifth as heavy as previously thought.

“If we count the amount of natural matter in the universe – the atoms of which we are all composed – more than half of what should be there today is missing,” said Ryan Shannon, co-author of the latest study. Study and professor at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia.

“We think the missing matter is hiding in intergalactic space, but it may be so hot and diffuse that it is impossible to see using normal techniques.”

He added: “Fast radio bursts sense this ionized matter. Even in space that is almost completely empty, they can ‘see’ all the electrons, and this allows us to measure the amount of stuff that exists between galaxies.”

The most distant FRB, named FRB 20220610A, was discovered in June last year by the ASKAP radio telescope in Australia and confirmed with the help of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

It broke the research team’s previous record by 50 percent.

“Using the ASKAP dish array, we were able to pinpoint the source of the explosion,” said co-author Stuart Ryder, an astronomer from Macquarie University in Australia.

Lookout: The most distant FRB, named FRB 20220610A, was discovered in June last year by the ASKAP radio telescope in Australia

Teamwork: This was confirmed with the help of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

“We then used ESO’s VLT in Chile to search for the source galaxy, and found that it is older and more distant than any other FRB found so far and is likely within a small group of merged galaxies.”

Finding distant FRBs is the key to accurately measuring the missing matter in the universe, as the late Australian astronomer Jean-Pierre (JP) Macquart discovered in 2020, researchers say.

“JP showed that the farther away the fast radio burst is, the more gas spreads between galaxies. This is now known as the Macquart relationship,” Ryder said.

Some recent fast radio bursts seem to have broken this relationship. Our measurements confirm that Macquart’s relationship applies beyond half of the known universe.

Fellow researcher Shannon added: “While we still don’t know what causes these massive bursts of energy, the paper confirms that fast radio bursts are common events in the universe and that we will be able to use them to detect intergalactic matter, and better understand the structure of the universe.”

With the recent discovery of the FRB, astronomers have essentially reached the limit of what can be detected with current telescopes.

However, they hope that the construction of two new observatories – the International Square Kilometer Array Observatory in South Africa and Australia, and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert – will change that.

These observatories should be able to find thousands of other fast radio bursts, including very distant ones beyond FRB 20220610A that are currently undetectable with current equipment.

The new study was published in the journal Sciences.

Fast radio bursts are short radio emissions from space of unknown origin

Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are radio emissions that appear temporarily and randomly, making them not only difficult to find, but also difficult to study.

The mystery stems from the fact that it is not known what could produce such a short, sharp explosion.

This has led some to speculate that it could be anything from colliding stars to artificially created messages.

Scientists searching for fast radio bursts (FRBs) that some believe may be signals sent by extraterrestrials may occur every second. The blue dots in this artist’s impression of the filamentous structure of galaxies are signals from fast radio bursts

The first FRB was observed, or rather “heard” by radio telescopes, in 2001 but was not discovered until 2007 when scientists were analyzing archival data.

But it was so temporary and seemingly random that it took astronomers years to agree that it was not a malfunction of one of the telescope’s instruments.

Researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics point out that fast radio bursts can be used to study the structure and evolution of the universe whether their origin is fully understood or not.

A large number of distant fast radio bursts can act as sensors of matter over enormous distances.

This interfering material scrambles the signal coming from the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the radiation left over from the Big Bang.

Careful study of this interfering matter should give a better understanding of fundamental cosmic components, such as the relative amounts of ordinary matter, dark matter and dark energy, that influence how quickly the universe is expanding.

Fast radio bursts can also be used to trace what led to the “fog” of hydrogen atoms that dominated the early universe disintegrating into free electrons and protons, when temperatures dropped after the Big Bang.