Aliens could be trying to contact Earth as twisted fields are found around a fast radio burst

Mysterious radio signals have been a hot topic in astronomy ever since their discovery indicated aliens may be trying to make contact with Earth.

Recorded in the radio band of the electromagnetic spectrum, these strangely bright flashes of light appear momentarily and randomly from space.

Known as fast radio bursts (FRBs), they were first detected only 15 years ago, but scientists have never known where they come from.

Now an international team of experts has made a breakthrough that can finally provide clues to the source.

They say one such FRB, known as 20190520B, likely comes from a binary system at the edge of a metal-poor dwarf galaxy nearly 3 billion light-years from Earth.

It’s unclear exactly what the source is — raising the prospect that extraterrestrial life could be responsible — but it appears to come from a “compact object” located next to a massive star with strong stellar winds.

Scientists involved in the new study said the object could be a black hole or a highly magnetized neutron star — known as a magnetar — though neither theory holds true “when considering all the data.”

They came to their conclusion after discovering that the FRB dramatically changed its signal twice while they were analyzing it.

The only explanation for this, the experts say, is that the magnetic fields around it must have been reversed or twisted by some “turbulent” force.

They believe that to produce something “as messy as a tangle of wool,” the signal must have passed relatively close to the source through “the dense and variable stellar wind from a companion star.”

Some FRBs appear to be one-time events, which is why a catastrophic explosion such as an extreme supernova was thought to be a possible explanation for them.

But less than 5 percent of the hundreds spotted are seen to repeat, occasionally on a regular pattern.

FRB 20190520B was the first persistently active repeating FRB ever discovered.

It was the focus of the new study and was analyzed by researchers from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) and West Virginia University using the Parkes Telescope in Australia and the Green Bank Telescope in the US.

In their paper, the scientists said they had discovered “turbulent magnetic fields around the repeating FRB.”

“This observation suggests that the pulses of radio wave emission may be from a compact object accompanied by a binary companion with strong stellar winds,” they added.

Conclusion: Scientists involved in the new study said the object could be a black hole or a highly magnetized neutron star – also called a magnetar – although neither theory is correct “when considering all the data”

The researchers claimed that a neutron star or black hole could be the source, as both had previously been found in binary systems with companions that have massive stellar winds.

An example of this is SS433, which is associated with a supernova-like radio nebula, W50.

However, in reviewing all the data, they said neither theory quite fits, meaning more research is needed.

Dr. Li Di and his team at the NAOC now want to learn more about the magnetized environment around FRBs in hopes of taking another step forward in their understanding of exactly where these signals come from.

FRBs – described as “short and mysterious beacons” – have been spotted in various and distant parts of the universe, as well as our own galaxy.

Not only is their origin unknown, but their appearance is also unpredictable.

Previous observations strongly suggest that repeaters and one-off events arise from separate mechanisms and astrophysical sources.

As radio waves travel through space, any interstellar gas or plasma along the way can distort or scatter the wave’s properties and trajectory.

The extent to which a radio wave is scattered can give clues to how much gas it has passed through and possibly the distance it has traveled from its source.

Most eruptions flash just once and are never seen again, making them impossible to predict, astronomers say.

Some show repetitive activity, but until recently it appeared to be completely random.

The presence of a regular sequence in the outburst activity could imply that the powerful outbursts are related to a large-scale cosmic phenomenon.

Think of the orbital movement of a massive star, a neutron star in a binary system or a black hole.

The new study is published in the journal Science.

RAPID RADIO BURSTS ARE BRIEF RADIO EMISSIONS FROM SPACE WHOSE ORIGIN IS UNKNOWN

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

The mystery stems from the fact that it is not known what could cause such a short and sharp burst.

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

Scientists are looking for fast radio bursts (FRBs) that some believe are signals sent by aliens that could be happening every second. The blue dots in this artist’s impression of the filamentary structure of galaxies are signals from FRBs

The first FRB was spotted, 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 it wasn’t a malfunction in one of the telescope’s instruments.

Researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics point out that FRBs can be used to study the structure and evolution of the universe, whether or not their origins are fully understood.

A large population of distant FRBs could act as probes of material over gigantic distances.

This intermediate material blurs the signal from the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the leftover radiation from the Big Bang.

A careful study of this intermediate material should yield a better understanding of basic cosmic constituents, such as the relative amounts of ordinary matter, dark matter and dark energy, that affect how fast the universe is expanding.

FRBs can also be used to track what the “mist” of hydrogen atoms that permeated the early universe broke down into free electrons and protons as temperatures cooled after the Big Bang.