The universe is filled with giant cosmic sparks! Astronomers say they’ve seen powerful sparks in the distant reaches of the Universe. But nobody is sure how these sparks form or even if they really come from space at all.
The fascinating quest for understanding these mysterious sparks has started back in August 24 2001, when the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia picked up an unusual signal—an intense burst of radio waves coming from the direction of the Small Magallenic Cloud beyond our galaxy.
Clearly, astronomers had seen some kind of rapid movement of charge — a spark. But what manner of spark could produce a signal capable of maxing out detectors on Earth after travelling a million light years through space?
Here a video relating the discovery of 4 mysterious bursts in outer space last year:
What is behind this space oddity?
Black hole collisions? Superconducting cosmic strings? Or have these sparks occurred in the Earth’s atmosphere (perytons)? This remains a mystery!
The most exciting possibility, of course, is that the signals are produced on both scales. In which case, both astronomers and atmospheric physicists will have exciting new fields on their hands.
The astronomy research paper entitled “Giant Sparks At Cosmological Distances?” was published in arXiv last week.
[…] more bursts, apparently from outside our galaxy, have now been found with the Parkes telescope and a seventh with the Arecibo telescope in Puerto […]