Mystery Bursts Baffle Astronomers: All Possibilities Are Being Considered

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Physics.org is reporting that mysterious radio waves have astronomers scratching their heads. The brief bursts have been recorded by two large radio telescopes sited on opposite sides of the planet.

Radio telescopes in both Australia and Peurto Rico have recorded the radio waves on several occasions.

From NPR:

In Puerto Rico, Fresh Reports Renew Speculation

There’s a report of a burst detected at the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. Lorimer says several more reports of detections will soon be showing up in the scientific literature.

As you would imagine, there’s been lots of speculation about what’s behind these mysterious bursts. Some astronomers think they’re caused by blitzars, pulses of energy from a supermassive star collapsing into a black hole. Others think they may be caused by power solar flares coming from stars nearer by.

And Lorimer says he has to mention it: “There’s even been discussions in the literature about signatures from extraterrestrial civilizations.”

It’s just a theoretical paper suggesting the bursts could be generated by intelligent beings intentionally beaming a radio signal directly at Earth.

James Cordes, an astronomer at Cornell University who’s also on the hunt for an explanation of these radio bursts, says he’d bet against the possibility of extraterrestrial involvement.

Cordes says astronomers will need to find more examples of these bursts before they’ll be able to say with any certainty what’s causing them.

You can read an in depth report from Kurzweil here