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Mystery radio bursts from the depths of the universe

Black holes collide?

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Astronomers searching the skies for pulsars instead found a mysterious burst of radio activity, nothing like anything any of them had seen before.

According to Reuters, the researchers were trawling through a back catalogue of data from the Parkes telescope in Australia when they came across the signal. It was five milliseconds long and might be the calling card of a single, highly energetic event such as a supernova, the team said.

Although the burst was very brief, it was very strong. The team tracked it back to a point of origin roughly three billion light years away.

Little green men are categorically ruled out: the burst is far too powerful, according to Maura McLaughlin of West Virginia University. "We think it has got to be some sort of catastrophic event happening in another galaxy - like two stars colliding and merging, or maybe a black hole. Something kind of exotic," she said.

McLaughlin speculated that many more of these bursts could be happening everyday, but because radio telescopes typically survey a very narrow field of the sky, we could just be missing them.

The work is published in the journal Science. ®

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Latest Comments

titliepoops

My money is on Microwave in the 3pm tea break at the staff canteen.

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Anonymous Coward

5 MS

Well if it was a collision then the burst would be longer than 5ms however if the burst was Directional (Think laser) and the source was spining you would only get a very short 'Burst' of energy say about 5ms.. so it is perfectly feasible. The same is true for gamma ray burst from black holes exhaust Jets, if the hole is oscilating we will get periodic flashes based on the oscilation.

My question is, how strong was it? and did it affect us? ie did it coincide with any other know events at that time?

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Anonymous Coward

Aliens

Maybe it was aliens trying to make contact with a huge sound system, but blew 5ms after they tryed it. Probably trying to warn other lifeforms that 'The Borg' is coming!

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