Source of puzzling cosmic signals found — in the kitchen

WHAT’S FOR DINNER? Signals detected by the Parkes radio

telescope (pictured) suggest that intelligent life in the universe has a

penchant for leftovers.

Excerpt from sciencenews.org

Mysterious radio signals detected by the Parkes telescope appear to

come from an advanced civilization in the Milky Way. 

Unfortunately, it’s

the one civilization we already know about.
Microwave ovens opened before they’re done cooking have been muddling the hunt for far more distant radio signals, researchers report

online April 9 at arXiv.org. Astronomers have had to contend with

enigmatic flares dubbed “perytons” ever since discovering equally

puzzling fast radio bursts, or FRBs (SN: 8/9/14, p. 22),

in 2007. Perytons and FRBs are quite similar, except that astronomers

realized that perytons originate on Earth, possibly from some

meteorological phenomenon, while FRBs come from other galaxies.

Three perytons in January coincided with independently detected

blasts of 2.4 gigahertz radio waves — the same frequency that microwave

ovens use to heat food. So researchers at the Parkes telescope in

Australia spent weeks heating mugs of water while moving the massive

radio dish around the sky, trying to re-create the phenomenon. Finally,

researchers tried opening the oven door mid-cooking instead of letting

the timer run out. Suddenly, perytons started showing up in the data.

The

source of the galactic FRBs remain an intriguing mystery. Astronomers

suspect they have something to do with imploding neutron stars or

eruptions on magnetars. At this point, however, they might want to

consider extraterrestrials nuking frozen pizzas.

Source Article from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AscensionEarth2012/~3/b01t4umbqNs/source-of-puzzling-cosmic-signals-found.html

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Source of puzzling cosmic signals found — in the kitchen