In 2007, a team of astronomers at the Parkes radio telescope in Australia discovered the first "fast radio burst," a millisecond-long flash of radio waves that has so far defied a natural explanation. To date, fewer than two dozen fast radio bursts (FRBs) have been discovered and many seem to originate from galaxies that are billions of light years away. And when you can't pin something on a natural explanation in science, you might as well pin it on aliens. [...]
Based on their calculations, they found that if such a transmitter were solar powered, it would require the amount of energy roughly equal to that of all the sunlight falling on a planet twice the size of Earth. The next question was if an artificial structure would even be able to withstand that much concentrated energy, or whether it would simply melt. According to Loeb and Lingam, it's possible if the massive device is water-cooled. While such a construction project is way beyond the capabilities of Earthlings, it is at least physically possible.
So what interest would an extraterrestrial civilization have in building such a massive, powerful device? Loeb and Lingam theorize that it might be used as a way to propel gigantic light sails across interstellar distances. Indeed, according to their calculations, the amount of power generated by this device would be strong enough to push a craft weighing about 1 million tons, or about 20 times heavier than the largest cruise ship on Earth.
No comments:
Post a Comment