More Mysterious Radio Bursts Were Detected Radiating From Space
Another series of mysterious “fast radio bursts” (FRBs) has been detected by a new telescope in Canada, emanating from somewhere deep in the cosmos. The last detection of FRBs came last year, picked up by Breakthrough Listen, a project focused on detecting signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life.
FRBs are a series of incredibly short, powerful radio emissions in millisecond lengths, coming form an unknown source, lightyears away. Signals were detected last year, named FRB 121102, and were the first repeating radio bursts ever discovered, believed to be emitting from a distant neutron star — the highly dense core of a collapsed star.
The source of the latest signals could be a number of things, including an exploding black hole, magnetar, a spinning pulsar known as a blitzar, or the most exciting prospect; a highly advanced extraterrestrial race.
The frequency of these signals, named FRB 180725A, are the first of their kind to be detected below 700 mHz. The FRBs earlier this year were above 800 mHz, with scientists calculating their source to be some 3 billion lightyears away. The source would have emanated the same amount of power in each burst as our sun does in an entire day.
If these mysterious waves are coming from an extraterrestrial civilization, their setup would be equivalent to two Earth-sized generators, and would likely exist as a power source for spacecraft, rather than simply sending signals into the universe to make their presence known.
The signals were detected by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) in British Columbia, a telescope that has been operating for under a year, with the primary goal of detecting FRBs. The telescope constantly scans 1,024 individual points in the sky 24/7, at 16,000 different frequencies, 1000 times per second; talk about an advanced piece of technology.
The first FRBs were discovered about a decade ago, making them one of the newest cosmological phenomena monitored by astrophysicists. Only a few dozen of these radio bursts have been detected since their initial discovery and scientists still consider the extraterrestrial explanation plausible.
Now that the CHIME telescope is solely focused on the signals, it may only be a matter of time until evidence of an intelligent extraterrestrial source are discovered. If they are from an advanced civilization, let’s just hope it still exists, considering these signals would have been sent millions or even billions of years ago.
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Watch this episode of Ancient Civilizations in which we discuss the exciting prospect of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization transmitting FRBs:
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Scientists Say They've Discovered Martian Life in Form of Fungi
The days of scientists dismissing all signs of life on the Martian surface as pareidolia or just a trick of shadows may be over, as a statistically significant majority of 70 scientists agree they’ve identified evidence of life on the red planet.
According to a paper published in the Journal of Astrobiology, as well as the consortium of believing scientists, the Mars Curiosity Rover seems to have photographed evidence of life on Mars in the form of algae, lichens, and fungi.
In addition to a number of pictures showing these prokaryotes and eukaryotes seeming to thrive on the surface of Martian rocks, other photos depict what appear to be fungi growing on the rover itself.
The evidence supports a number of hypotheses that these types of “puff-balls,” or fungal organisms would be able to survive the Martian atmosphere, despite exposure to intense space radiation and harsh atmospheric conditions.
Though this information is just now being released to the public, other scientists are claiming they identified equaling compelling evidence decades ago detected by the 1976 Viking mission, yet for some reason NASA still didn’t equip subsequent missions with the proper tools to test for life. And despite the substantial photographic evidence of this life, the only way to truly prove whether it’s living is to sample it and send it back to Earth for testing.
“There are no geological or other abiogenic forces on Earth which can produce sedimentary structures, by the hundreds, which have mushroom shapes, stems, stalks, and shed what looks like spores on the surrounding surface,” said the study’s lead author Dr. Regina Dass of the Department of Microbiology at India’s School of Life Sciences. “In fact, fifteen specimens were photographed by NASA growing out of the ground in just three days!”
Dass and team also argued that there are fluctuations in methane levels on the ground as well as in the Martian atmosphere that vary between seasons, much like methane fluctuations seen on Earth. 90 percent of that methane is the direct result of living organisms.
NASA denies the assertion that these photos are proof of living organisms, calling into question the validity of the journal making the claims. Instead the administration says the photos simply depict minerals like hematite.
But if this scientific consortium is correct and there are basic life forms able to survive Mars’ hostile atmosphere, how they ended up on the red planet is a bit of a mystery.
Considering that certain cyanobacteria and fungi have been observed to survive the vacuum of space and cosmic radiation, some believe these microorganisms on Mars may have come from Earth, either blasted from meteorite impacts or having caught a ride with one of the rovers.
And then there’s also the other hypothesis that says they could be remnants of an ancient civilization that once resided on Mars, before some cataclysmic event turned the planet into the inhospitable rock it is today. At least that’s what remote viewers working for the CIA claim they saw.
For more on the potential habitability of Mars watch Dr. Robert Zubrin on this episode of Beyond Belief:
