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Artificial intelligence in search of extraterrestrial life in the universe has uncovered dozens of radio bursts previously unknown.
The Breakthrough Listen program found 72 new fast radio signals – mysterious spatial signals – from a galaxy three billion light years away.
AFP
Space scientists have been searching for mysterious extraterrestrial signals for years, but it's hard to find anything meaningful – space is huge, after all.
The big problem is not collecting the data, but browsing it.
This is why scientists have used artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to search for these signals in existing data caches. Robots work much faster than humans.
This latest discovery came after AI searched 400 terabytes of data collected last August. A single terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes, or 1 million megabytes – and an hour-long BBC iPlayer program takes only 160 megabytes of space.
PA: Press Association
Scientists have named the source of these newly discovered signals, well outside the Milky Way galaxy, as the "repeater" FRB 121102.
FRBs are unique radio pulses emitted by extremely distant galaxies that last only a few milliseconds.
But FRB 121102 is the only one ever recorded to emit repeated bursts.
Breakthrough Listen recorded 23 of these bursts of FRB 121102 using the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in West Virginia in 2017.
What are FRBs and why are they important?
Here's what you need to know …
- FRBs, or fast radio bursts, are a mysterious spatial phenomenon
- These are very fast radio bursts that only last a few milliseconds (or thousandths of a second)
- They are detected as energy peaks that change in strength over time
- The first time was discovered in 2007, found by looking through the data from the space survey
- Many FRBs have been found since then
- There is also a FRB source that sends repeated bursts – and no one really knows why
- In fact, scientists have struggled to explain exactly what causes FRBs in the first place.
- Theories include rapidly rotating neutron stars, black holes and even extraterrestrial life
- FRBs are important simply because they are so confusing to the experts
- Unlocking the secrets of what causes them will help us better understand what is happening beyond our galaxy
- And if it turns out that other life forms are causing these FRBs, it would be a discovery that would change the world
The source of the FRB remains a mystery and the nature of the object that emits them is still unknown.
Theories range from highly magnetized neutron stars and super massive black holes to signs of an advanced civilization.
Gerry Zhang, a Ph.D. student at the University of Berkeley, has come up with a powerful learning algorithm to re-analyze the 2017 GBT dataset.
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They found 72 additional flakes not detected at the origin.
Zhang's team used some of the techniques used by Internet technology companies to optimize search results and rank images.
Just as pulsar patterns have helped astronomers understand the extreme physical conditions of these objects, the new measures of the FRB will help to determine what are the powers of these enigmatic sources.
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