Are These the Screams of Cosmic Disaster?
Telescopes have spotted hundreds of powerful signals coming from deep space. Who, or what, is behind them?
Nobody seemed to have any idea what caused them. Was it a spy satellite, perhaps, transmitting clandestine signals and fooling radio telescopes? Could they be the dying screams of supermassive stars, on the verge of collapsing forever into a black hole? Or were they messages from aliens, sending bursts of energy across the cosmos?
For years these mysterious signals have puzzled astronomers. Every now and then radio telescopes would pick one up — a sudden bright flash that disappeared as quickly as it came. When astronomers did the careful work of analysing the flash, it would invariably turn out to be incredibly distant, originating half way across the universe. As for the energy involved, calculations said this must be enormous, almost unbelievably intense.
Lacking an easy explanation, astronomers named them Fast Radio Bursts, or FRBs for short, and filed them away as yet another cosmic mystery. Nevertheless, some early studies revealed intriguing facts. They seemed to be common — erupting once every few seconds somewhere in the universe. They appeared, at least for a while, to follow intriguing numerical patterns — sparking speculation they were…
