A mysterious radio burst that keeps repeating | Hacker News Reader

A mysterious radio burst that keeps repeating

sciencealert.com

78 pointswglb60 comments

Here's the section on FRB 121102 on the "Fast radio burst" Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_radio_burst#FRB_121102

“ within those milliseconds, they can discharge as much power as hundreds of millions of Suns.”

Didn’t know that

But is it the full power of the entire life of millions of suns or the equivalent of what millions of suns produce in a millisecond?

Power is by definition per unit time.

Although these bursts are coming from a place where time is rather more spread out than it is here.

What does that mean!? Might a millisecond there last as long as a few of our Earth seconds? What is this concept called ( for me to read up on it)?

I think this is a good place to have a look : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_time_dilation

My assumption is that the place that this burst is coming from is near a very large, very dense mass.

That wasn't a joke on units of measurement. It was a joke on grammar.

That is mind blowing. Our brains cannot comprehend the enormity of it.

Sounds like a Gamma Ray

No, radio, the other end of the spectrum. That's why they are called Fast Radio Bursts (FRB). Gamma Ray Bursts (GRB) are (probably) something completely different.

If I were trying to let intelligent life elsewhere know that I exist and that I am intelligent I would have to create a patterned noise that distinguishes itself from natural noises that could be formed spontaneously. Talk about a challenge!

I believe the standard solution is to send a sequence of signals with durations being consecutive prime numbers (multiplied by some unit of time, but that's irrelevant).

The canonical answer ("Yes, I am very smart too") is to reply with a continuation of the sequence where the transmission stopped.

You could also eg convert the sequence from binary into graycode instead of continuing it.

Just any simple transformation that's obviously not background noise.

Interstellar numbers station.

exactly this I was thinking about :D

Better than an interstellar microwave weapon

The article was nice, but when I hit the back button , the site scrolled to a suggested article and told me "hey, check this before you go".

No, just let me use my back button.

Install a script blocker.

Can't you just disable hijacking of the history in the browser?

Is there a term for this terrible practice? Should be similar to scrolljacking, but backjacking feels weird... perhaps navjacking?

Not the right term, but certainly a 'dark pattern'. It could be 'button hijacking', though.

I dislike that comments like this are the top voted comment rather than something insightful about the article’s content itself.

> Please don't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be interesting

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Fair enough, I didn't know. I can't find a "delete" button for my comment though. Where is it?

On the other hand though, I feel like we should always complain about that kind of behavior, if at least to shame the practice and encourage developers to actively refuse implementing those.

You can't delete comments once they have responses.

Oh, that's why. Let's downvote it to hell then.

You cannot downvote a comment below -4 I think.

> Fair enough, I didn't know.

IIRC, that's a new rule, added around a month ago. Since your account is older than that, it's very probable that the rule wasn't there the last time you looked at that page. Which means you shouldn't feel bad about not knowing.

What a horribly pretentious rule. And the commonality of these annoyances are only compounded by this capitulation to poor design.

Luckily, there is no rule forbidding complaining about rules.

> Please don't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be interesting

I partially disagree with this rule. Complaining about crappy websites might be annoying for old timers and experienced techies, but let's say a 22 years old fresh web programmer joins HN to read some news and discovers that the framework/library/tool his PM suggested produces a pile of crappy code that renders every site slow as molasses, and the same product is used on a site getting hard criticism about that; he could actually learn something and ultimately find a better solution for his job, ultimately contributing to make a better web. I know I'm taking it to the extreme, but you get my point. I would rather change that line to something like "keep concise and to the minimum all comments about site formatting, slowness etc. and don't reply to those comments unless you can recomment a better solution".

I agree, naming and shaming with regards to web design is about the only way to get stuff like this out of the mainstream.

As an aside, if I see a complaint like this, it stops me from visiting the page and giving them more traffic, which I believe is a net positive.

I'd much rather read it on IA than deal with dark pattern shenanigans.

But it is a rule and as such should be respected whether we agree with it or not, for the same reasons we don't ignore the other rules in that list. You can email dang and try to convince him to change it, he's an extremely reasonable person.

This comment would be better if it actually prevented me from viewing the article. But it starts with "the article was nice", which accomplishes the opposite.

For me it looks like a source with two rotations, one for the millisecond cycle and the other for the 157-day cycle. Perhaps something is obstructing the source and is rotating around it.

Magnetar orbiting a black hole or something.

And we know it’s a 157 day orbit.

Could be a tidal lock of a pulsar around a black hole. We only get the milisecond because the black hole is obscuring the burst pointing to us. Otherwise the beam is not pointed at us.

(P)--->---- ( BH ) ----> ( Solar System )

Did you mean a Pulsar?

They're all neutron stars. Magnetars are young and make some of the strongest magnetic fields in the universe. Pulsars are old and weak, and make regular beeps if you're watching them from the right place. They're probably on a spectrum, as opposed to rigidly separated categories.

There's a hypothesis that the fast radio bursts like the ones detected here might be produced by magnetars.

Reminds Stanislaw Lem's His Master's Voice.

I’ve been reading Lem’s work lately but haven’t gotten to this one. Do you recommend it?

Wrote too long a review :) in short words - yes, I'd recommend it, I like it a lot - and know many people who don't.

yup. what a lovely and hugely thought provoking book. specifically on the nature of cognition, and our need to impose order / structure on unknown. which ultimately, is a reflection on ourselves...

Check the staff roster to see if the bursts match up with anyone using the downstairs microwave.

Someone who only eats when the telescope is observing FRB121102

We should study that person who is capable of 157-days between meals.

The background to that reference is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peryton_(astronomy)

My favorite part of that story IIRC is that it only registered when people opened the microwave before the alarm went off.

I am more patient now to let the microwave complete after hearing about subtleties of the microwave emissions.

Me too, I now either wait for it to time out or hit the stop button before opening the door. It's completely irrational and I feel a bit silly for it since I don't live anywhere near a radio observatory, but I still do it.

WiFi users in your neighborhood are thankful.

My superpower used to be getting impatient and opening the microwave just as it showed zero seconds, but before the alarm went off. It made me wonder how it happened that they were programmed to make that possible.

So. Is it aliens or not.

It’s never aliens

or Lupus...

The radio bursts are alien to us. They come from another place that is not here, therefore, alien.

You’re trying too hard.

Oh not at all. I can come up with lame things like this all day long. No effort was exerted what so ever. =)

humpback wales checking in with their peeps

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