A mysterious signal from space that looks like a human heartbeat

Despite the fact that it exists High speed radio flashes We’ve known (FRB) for over 20 years, and we still don’t know its exact source. For the first time, the flash was recorded in 2001. Despite the fact that it lasted for milliseconds, its energy was comparable to the energy produced by the Sun in a month.

Dozens of them have appeared since then. The origin of the majority is a mystery to us. Although research has been done for years to try to explain the source and essence of these mysterious phenomena, we are still far from knowing the truth. At the moment, it is believed that these could be signals generated by black holes, explosions of pulsars, Colliding neutron stars or magnetic starsAnd even the effect of space travel in space.

Canadian astronomers were stunned by one of the recently received signals. They listened to space in 2019 with CHIME radiotelexope And it came to a signal similar to a human heartbeat. Although this discovery was made three years ago, its detailed analyzes have only now appeared in a scientific article published in the prestigious journal Nature.

This special mention is tagged as FRB 20191221A, lasted up to 3 secondsIts specificity has surprised astronomers. – It wasn’t very long, about three seconds, but it had periodic peaks that were very precise, emitting every split second—boom, boom, boom—like a heartbeat. For the first time, the signal itself is cyclical, explains Danielle Mitchell, an astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Canadian scientists have been able to determine the source of this generally unique signal. It turns out that z A galaxy about 1 billion light-years away from the Milky Way. Unfortunately, it is not clear which object it emits and whether it is, say, a planet. If so, we may have reason to believe that there may be an intelligent civilization. Meanwhile, astronomers are more inclined to the hypothesis that this is the work of some very energetic bodies.