The idea that there are aliens out there on one of the millions of planets in space isn’t necessarily hard to believe. However, that they’d be anything like humans with the same technology, methods of communication, and even consciousness is a bit more far-fetched. While conspiracy theorists would insist little green men are out there (and potentially already on our planet), it’s a fringe belief for which there’s been no proof. However, scientists now believe that there may be aliens living 4 billion light years away trying to get in touch with Earth.
- A paper in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics outlines the details of this exciting claim. Joeri van Leeuwen, a scientist at the University of Amsterdam, teamed up with a team of astronomers from around the world for the paper. The report discusses five fast radio bursts (FRBs) from 2019 uncovered during the upgrade of the Wserbork Synthesis Radio Telescope in the Netherlands.
- The Westerbork is a “state-of-the-art machine, one of the most powerful in the world.” The system contains 14 25-meter dishes and its own supercomputer, the Apertif Radio Transient System (ARTS) that makes it extremely sensitive to FRBs. “Only through the very high time and frequency resolution of ARTS are these hard-to-find FRBs detected, producing an unbiased view of the intrinsic population properties,” Joery van Leeuwen’s paper reads.
- Not only could the Westerbork pick up the FRBs, it knows where they came from. As a result, astronomers discovered that five separate, mysterious FRBs came through over a five-week period in 201. They originated from a place roughly 4 billion light years away, passing through the Triangulum Galaxy about 2.73 million light-years from Earth.
- Of course, the FRBs may not have come from aliens. It’s very possible that they’re just “space noise.” In other words, signals that came from the likes of neutron stars or black holes. However, it is indeed possible that an alien race created the signals in an attempt to get in touch with anyone else that might be out there.
- Professor Joeri van Leeuwen and his team want to look into the alien signals more deeply. They’d like not only to gain a greater understanding of FRBs and their origins but discover if the five they discovered from 2019 were actually from aliens. It’s an exciting prospect!
