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Jelly, jelly so fine

Thursday, January 5, 2017

Did you feel that?


Fast radio bursts were first detected in a far away constellation called Auriga the charioteer in 2012. A dwarf galaxy in those general parts has been generating something heretofore unknown, repeating patterns of energy  bursts that have never before been detected. The originating galaxy is roughly three billion light years away, at this point, seventeen bursts have been observed.

The high energy phenomenon is known as FRB 121102. It was first discovered at Arecibo in Puerto Rico.

“Our discovery of repeating bursts from FRB 121102 shows that for at least one source, the origin of the bursts cannot be cataclysmic, and further, must be able to repeat on short [less than 1 minute] timescales,” the authors wrote in the paper, published in the Astrophysical Journal.
“Whether FRB 121102 is a unique object in the currently known sample of FRBs, or all FRBs are capable of repeating, its characterization is extremely important to understanding fast extragalactic radio transients.”
A paper was recently published in Nature about these frbs. These bursts may be the result of a Magnetar, a type of intensely magnetic Neutron Star, according to this article.
I myself am betting on an invasion force.
A neutron walked into a bar and asked, "How much for a gin and tonic?" The bartender smiled wryly and replied, "For you, no charge." 

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Heisenberg and Schrödinger get pulled over for speeding.
The cop asks Heisenberg "Do you know how fast you were going?"
Heisenberg replies, "No, but we know our position in space!"
The officer looks at him confused and says "you were going 108 miles per hour!"
Heisenberg throws his arms up and cries, "Great! Now we're lost!"
The officer looks over the car and asks Schrödinger if the two men have anything in the trunk.
"A cat," Schrödinger replies.
The cop opens the trunk and yells "Hey! This cat is dead."

Schrödinger angrily replies, "Well he is now."

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A photon checks into a hotel. The bellman asks if needs help with any luggage. The photon replies that he is really traveling light.

1 comment:

Jon Harwood said...

So, at the speed of light, the message is three billion years old. That puts it at 1.5 billion years after the origin of life on Earth. Hmmm.... lets see. If we wait a billion years or so the signal may include video, but will the video be of the Nuclear destruction of life on that Galaxy after a orange faced blond creature nukes a kimchee eating critter; setting off the final conflagration? Stay tuned. PS: Have the cop look in the trunk again. The cat is ALIVE!