Scientists use artificial intelligence to find mysterious cosmic signals

Scientists say that they used artificial intelligence (AI) to uncover 72 new radio bursts from a mysterious source located about three billion light years from Earth. The initiative could advance the search for signs of intelligent life in the universe, said researchers at the University of California at Berkeley in the United States. Fast radio bursts are light pulses of radio transmission only a few milliseconds, which are thought to be from distant galaxies.

However, the source of these broadcasts is still unclear, according to research published in The Astrophysical Journal. Theories range from highly magnetized neutron stars blown by gas flows from a near supermassive black hole, to suggestions that bursting properties correspond to the signatures of technologies developed by an advanced civilization.

"This work is exciting, not only because it helps us understand the dynamic behavior of fast radio bursts in greater detail, but also because of the promise of using machine learning to detect signals missed by conventional algorithms." said Andrew Siemion of the University. of California – Berkele. Researchers are also applying the successful machine learning algorithm to find new types of signals that may come from extraterrestrial civilizations.

While most fast radio bursts are unique, the source here, FRB 121102, is one of a kind with regard to issuing repeated bursts. This behavior has attracted the attention of many astronomers in the hope of pinpointing the cause and extreme physics involved in fast radio gusts. The AI ​​algorithms that collected the radio signals from the data were recorded over a five-hour period in 2017 by the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia in the United States.

An earlier analysis of the 400 terabytes of data employed standard computer algorithms to identify 21 bursts during this period. "All have been seen in one hour, suggesting that the source alternates between periods of rest and frantic activity," said Vishal Gajjar, a postdoctoral researcher at Berkeley.

The researchers developed the new powerful machine-learning algorithm and reanalyzed the data for 2017, uncovering another 72 gusts that were not detected at the start. This brings the total number of gusts detected from FRB 121102 to about 300 since its discovery in 2012, the researchers said.