Could Mysterious Cosmic Light Flashes Be Powering Alien Spacecraft? [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

Could Mysterious Cosmic Light Flashes Be Powering Alien Spacecraft?
By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | March 10, 2017 01:51pm ET



Bizarre flashes of cosmic light may actually be generated by advanced alien civilizations, as a way to accelerate interstellar spacecraft to tremendous speeds, a new study suggests.

Astronomers have catalogued just 20 or so of these brief, superbright flashes, which are known as fast radio bursts (FRBs), since the first one was detected in 2007. FRBs seem to be coming from galaxies billions of light-years away, but what's causing them remains a mystery.

"Fast radio bursts are exceedingly bright given their short duration and origin at great distances, and we haven't identified a possible natural source with any confidence," study co-author Avi Loeb, a theorist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a statement Thursday (March 9). "An artificial origin is worth contemplating and checking." [5 Bold Claims of Alien Life]

One potential artificial origin, according to the new study, might be a gigantic radio transmitter built by intelligent aliens. So Loeb and lead author Manasvi Lingam, of Harvard University, investigated the feasibility of this possible explanation.

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