Scouring the skies for alien technology has turned up strange radio bursts Thomas R. Fletcher / Alamy Stock Photo

One of the most mysterious objects in space just got even weirder. A group of researchers just found 15 new fast radio bursts, all from the only one of these objects that we’ve ever seen repeat.

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are some of the universe’s strangest phenomena: powerful radio signals that flash from distant space for milliseconds and then disappear. They have been attributed to everything from black holes to extraterrestrial intelligence.

Because they’re so brief, and because radio telescopes can only watch a small area of the sky at a time, only about 2 dozen FRBs have ever been detected. Of those, only one has been observed to repeat: FRB 121102, which resides in a dwarf galaxy about 3 billion light years away from Earth.

Advertisement

Learn about the world’s largest radio telescope: In our expert talk at New Scientist Live

Now, researchers with the Breakthrough Listen initiative, a $100 million search for signs of intelligent life in the universe, have detected 15 more pulses from FRB 121102.

These signals were at higher frequencies than any FRB we’ve seen before. It’s still unclear what that means for these elusive events, but researchers hope that it will help narrow down the field of potential explanations.

“Previously we thought there wasn’t much emission at high or low frequencies, but now it looks like there is,” says Avi Loeb at Harvard University. “It’s twice as high as the typical frequency that was previously claimed for this repeater.”

A higher range of frequencies could make repeating FRBs like 121102 easier to detect, which is crucial because all of the current attempts to explain them have only one source to work from. But it also adds another layer of weirdness which could make the mechanism producing FRBs even more difficult to pin down.

“It’s very funky how the individual bursts can pop up anywhere in this wide range of frequencies, even though each individual burst has a relatively narrow frequency coverage,” says Peter Williams, also at Harvard University. “I have yet to see anyone offer up a good explanation for how that might happen.”

Read more: Spectrum wars – The battle for the airwaves; We still haven’t heard from aliens – here’s why we might never; Earth-sized telescope set to snap first picture of a black hole

We have corrected the budget of Breakthrough Listen</s>A sequence of 14 of the 15 detected bursts illustrate their dispersed spectrum and extreme variability. The streaks across the colored energy plot are the bursts appearing at different times and different energies because of dispersion caused by 3 billion years of travel through intergalactic space. In the top frequency spectrum, the dispersion has been removed to show the 300 microsecond pulse spike. Capturing this diverse set of bursts was made possible by the broad bandwidth that can be processed by the Breakthrough Listen backend at the Green Bank Telescope. Credit: University of California - Berkeley

Breakthrough Listen, an initiative to find signs of intelligent life in the universe, has detected 15 brief but powerful radio pulses emanating from a mysterious and repeating source – FRB 121102 – far across the universe.

Fast radio bursts are brief, bright pulses of radio emission from distant but largely unknown sources, and FRB 121102 is the only one known to repeat: more than 150 high-energy bursts have been observed coming from the object, which was identified last year as a dwarf galaxy about 3 billion light years from Earth.

Possible explanations for the repeating bursts range from outbursts from rotating neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields – so-called magnetars – to a more speculative idea: They are directed energy sources, powerful laser bursts used by extraterrestrial civilizations to power spacecraft, akin to Breakthrough Starshot's plan to use powerful laser pulses to propel nano-spacecraft to Earth's nearest star, Proxima Centauri.

"Bursts from this source have never been seen at this high a frequency," said Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center and of the Breakthrough Listen program.

As astronomers around the globe try to understand the mechanism generating fast radio bursts, they have repeatedly turned their radio telescopes on FRB 121102. Siemion and his team alerted the astronomical community to the high-frequency activity via an Astronomer's Telegram on Monday evening, Aug. 28.

"As well as confirming that the source is in a newly active state, the high resolution of the data obtained by the Listen instrument will allow measurement of the properties of these mysterious bursts at a higher precision than ever possible before," said Breakthrough Listen postdoctoral researcher Vishal Gajjar, who discovered the increased activity.

First detected with the Parkes Telescope in Australia, fast radio bursts have now been seen by several radio telescopes around the world. FRB 121102 was discovered on Nov. 2, 2012, (hence its name) and in 2015 it was the first fast radio burst seen to repeat, ruling out theories of bursts' origins that involved the catastrophic destruction of the progenitor, at least in this instance.

Regardless of FRB 121102's ultimate source, when the recently detected pulses left their host galaxy, our solar system was less than 2 billion years old, noted Steve Croft, a Breakthrough Listen astronomer at UC Berkeley. Life on Earth consisted only of single-celled organisms; it would be another billion years before even the simplest multi-cellular life began to evolve.

As part of Breakthrough Listen's program to observe nearby stars and galaxies for signatures of extraterrestrial technology, the project science team at UC Berkeley added FRB 121102 to its list of targets. In the early hours of Saturday, Aug. 26, Gajjar observed that area of the sky using the Breakthrough Listen backend instrument at the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia.

The instrument accumulated 400 terabytes (a million million bytes) of data over a five-hour period, observing across the entire 4 to 8 GHz frequency band. This large dataset was searched for signatures of short pulses from the source over a broad range of frequencies, with a characteristic dispersion, or delay as a function of frequency, caused by the presence of gas in space between Earth and the source. The distinctive shape that the dispersion imposes on the initial pulse is an indicator of the amount of material between us and the source, and hence an indicator of the distance to the host galaxy.

Analysis by Gajjar and the Breakthrough Listen team revealed 15 new pulses from FRB 121102. The observations show for the first time that fast radio bursts emit at higher frequencies than previously observed, with the brightest emission occurring at around 7 GHz.

"The extraordinary capabilities of the backend receiver, which is able to record several gigahertz of bandwidth at a time, split into billions of individual channels, enable a new view of the frequency spectrum of FRBs, and should shed additional light on the processes giving rise to FRB emission." Gajjar said.

"Whether or not fast radio bursts turn out to be signatures of extraterrestrial technology, Breakthrough Listen is helping to push the frontiers of a new and rapidly growing area of our understanding of the universe around us," Siemion said.

Explore further Mysterious bursts of energy do come from outer space</s>San Francisco: British cosmologist Stephen Hawking's USD 100-million 'Breakthrough Listen' initiative has detected 15 fast radio bursts emanating from the mysterious "repeater" FRB 121102.

Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are brief, bright pulses of radio emission from distant galaxies.

First detected with the Parkes Telescope in Australia, FRBs have now been seen by several radio telescopes around the world. FRB 121102 was discovered in 2012, on November 2nd (hence its name).

In 2015, it was the first FRB seen to repeat, ruling out theories of the bursts' origins that involved the catastrophic destruction of the progenitor (at least in this particular instance). And in 2016, the repeater was the first FRB to have its location pinpointed with sufficient precision to allow its host galaxy to be identified.

It resides in a dwarf galaxy about 3 billion light years away from Earth.

Attempts to understand the mechanism that generates FRBs have made this galaxy a target of ongoing monitoring campaigns by instruments across the globe. Possible explanations for FRBs range from outbursts from rotating neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields, to more speculative ideas that they are directed energy sources used by extraterrestrial civilizations to power spacecraft.

Breakthrough Listen is a global astronomical initiative launched in 2015 by Internet investor and philanthropist Yuri Milner and cosmologist Stephen Hawking.

As part of their program to observe nearby stars and galaxies for signatures of extraterrestrial technology, the Listen science team at UC Berkeley added FRB 121102 to their list of targets.

In the early hours of Saturday, August 26, UC Berkeley Postdoctoral Researcher Dr Vishal Gajjar observed the location of FRB 121102 using the Breakthrough Listen backend instrument at the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia.

The instrument accumulated 400 TB of data on the object over a five hour observation, observing the entire 4 to 8 GHz frequency band.

This large dataset was searched for signatures of short pulses from the source over a broad range of frequencies, with a characteristic dispersion, or delay as a function of frequency, caused by the presence of gas in space between us and the source.

The distinctive shape that the dispersion imposes on the initial pulse is an indicator of the amount of material between us and the source, and hence an indicator of the distance to the host galaxy.

Analysis by Dr. Gajjar and the Listen team revealed 15 new pulses from FRB 121102. As well as confirming that the source is in a newly active state, the high resolution of the data obtained by the Listen instrument will allow measurement of the properties of these mysterious bursts at a higher precision than ever possible before.

The observations also show for the first time that FRBs emit at higher frequencies (with the brightest emission occurring at around 7 GHz) than previously observed. The extraordinary capabilities of the Listen backend, which is able to record several gigahertz of bandwidth at a time, split into billions of individual channels, enable a new view of the frequency spectrum of FRBs, and should shed additional light on the processes giving rise to FRB emission.

When the recently-detected pulses left their host galaxy our entire Solar System was just 2 billion years old. Life on Earth consisted of only single-celled organisms, and it would be another billion years before even the simplest multi-cellular life began to evolve. Whether or not FRBs eventually turn out to be signatures of extraterrestrial technology, Breakthrough Listen is helping to push the frontiers of a new and rapidly growing area of our understanding of the Universe around us.</s>Scientists involved in a $100 million initiative to search for alien life have detected 15 mysterious signals coming from a galaxy 3 billion light-years away.

These signals, known as fast radio bursts, are a new batch of radio emissions emanating from a source dubbed the ‘repeater’ – the first FRB ever known to repeat.

According to the experts with Breakthrough Listen, the discovery confirms the source is in a newly active state, and marks the first time FRBs have been detected at higher frequencies.

Scientists involved in a $100 million initiative to search for alien life have detected 15 mysterious signals coming from a galaxy 3 billion light-years away. The animation shows 14 of the 15 bursts in succession, illustrating their dispersed spectrum and extreme variability

Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are radio emissions that appear temporarily and randomly, making them not only hard to find, but also hard to study. The mystery stems from the fact it is not known what could produce such a short and sharp burst. This has led some to speculate they could be anything from stars colliding to artificially created messages. The first FRB was spotted, or rather 'heard' by radio telescopes, back in 2007. But it was so temporary and seemingly random that it took years for astronomers to agree it wasn't a glitch in one of the telescope's instruments.

Breakthrough Listen, backed by Mark Zuckerberg, Stephen Hawking, and billionaire Yuri Milner, has been gathering data with the Green Bank Radio Telescope in West Virginia, Lick Observatory’s Automated Planet Finder on Mt Hamilton in California, and the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia.

While it remains unknown whether the 15 newly detected pulses are signs of intelligent alien life, or instead stem from natural processes in the distant universe, the scientists do known that these radio emissions left their host galaxy long before multi-cellular life even existed on Earth.

The signals come from a source known as FRB 121102, which became the first FRB to have its location pinpointed after scientists in a 2016 study traced it to a dwarf galaxy 3 billion light years away.

When the 15 pulses left this dwarf galaxy, the entire solar system was just 2 billion years old.

The new FRBs were spotted this weekend by a team led by UC Berkeley Postdoctoral Researcher Dr. Vishal Gajjar, who accumulated 400 TB of data on the object over a period of 5 hours.

The researchers observed the entire 4 to 8 GHz frequency band, searching for signals across a broad range of frequencies, with a characteristic dispersion, or delays caused by the presence of gas in space, according to Breakthrough Listen.

‘On Saturday, August 26 at 13:51:44 UTC we initiated observations of the well-known repeating fast radio burst FRB 121102 using the Breakthrough Listen Digital Backend with the C-band receiver at the Green Bank Telescope,’ the team wrote in The Astronomer’s Telegram.

And, in doing this, the researchers found for the first time that the FRBs can emit at much higher frequencies than previously known.

In their observation, the team noted the appearance of several bursts that peaked in brightness at frequencies above 6 GHz.

The brightest, they say, occurred at around 7 GHz.

FRB 121102, or ‘the repeater,’ was first detected in 2012.

Then in 2015, scientists saw it again, making it the first FRB seen to repeat.

Subsequent research identified a cradle of young stars 2.4 billion light years away as the source of the mysterious fast radio bursts detected on Earth.

But, the mechanism that generates these signals still remains a mystery.

Scientists have posed all sorts of explanations, from outbursts from rotating neutron stars to energy sources from alien deep-space explorers.

This past spring, the Breakthrough Listen ream released their initial results from their first year of observation.

After combing through petabytes of data, the Breakthrough Listen team has ranked 11 events considered to be most significant – but so far, they’ve found no convincing signs of intelligent life.

The team also submitted a paper analyzing nearly 700 stars across all spectral types, which they say acts as a ‘launch pad’ for deeper investigations to come.</s>An Indian scientist recently discovered 15 repeating radio bursts emitted by a dwarf galaxy after observing it for five hours.

Here's all you need to know about the finding:

1. This discovery was made by Breakthrough Listen postdoctoral researcher Vishal Gajjar, who was detecting extraterrestrials. The dwarf galaxy that gave out these 15 electromagnetic emissions is located at a distance of around 3 million light years from Earth.

2. Breakthrough Listen was launched in 2015 as an initiative to find signs of intelligent life in the universe. As per the hypotheses of the researchers, these emissions could be from an energy source that is being utilised by extraterrestrial civilisations to fuel their spaceships.

"Bursts from this source have never been seen at this high a frequency," said Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI Research Centre and a member of the Breakthrough Listen programme.

ALSO READ: Bizarre alien technology spotted in a new UFO sighting in Germany? [VIDEO]

3. "When the recently-detected pulses left their host galaxy, our entire Solar System was just 2 billion years old," said Breakthrough Listen in a statement, referring to the 15 fast radio bursts (FRBs).

It added: "Life on Earth consisted of only single-celled organisms, and it would be another billion years before even the simplest multi-cellular life began to evolve."

4. The Parkes Telescope in Australia had spotted FRBs for the first time. The phenomenon was later observed by numerous radio telescopes across the world. FRBs are basically radiant emissions from distant galaxies.

ALSO READ: NASA's Cassini is heading towards its Grand Finale on September 15: Top things to know

5. The sources of FRBs are distant and usually unidentified. Discovered on November 2, 2012, FRB 121102 is believed to be the source of these 15 radio bursts. FRB 121102 is the only one known to repeat: More than 150 high-energy bursts have been observed coming from the object. It was identified last year as a dwarf galaxy located 3 million light years from Earth.

6. Researchers are trying to understand what leads to the formation of FRBs, and the dwarf galaxy has turned into the main target for all the monitoring operations carried out across the world.

"As well as confirming that the source is in a newly active state, the high resolution of the data obtained by the Listen instrument will allow measurement of the properties of these mysterious bursts at a higher precision than ever possible before," said the Breakthrough Listen statement.</s>GREEN BANK, WV (WOWK) – Fifteen bursts of radio emission were detected at the Green Bank Telescope during observations of a dwarf galaxy three billion light years away. This is the first time bursts from this source have been seen at these frequencies.

According to Breakthrough Listen, an initiative to find signs of intelligent life in the universe, 15 fast radio bursts were detected emanating from the “mysterious repeater” FRB 121102.

Breakthrough Listen reported the results as an Astronomer’s Telegram, and they will describe the results in further detail in an upcoming scientific journal article.

Breakthrough Listen says fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are brief, bright pulses of radio emission from distant galaxies. FRB’s were first detected with the Parkes Telescope in Australia, but they have now been seen by several radio telescopes around the world.

They say that explanations for FRBs range from outbursts from rotating neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields to directed energy sources used by extraterrestrial civilizations to power spacecraft.

Breakthrough Listen is a global astronomical initiative launched in 2015 by Internet investor and philanthropist Yuri Milner and cosmologist Stephen Hawking.</s>Breakthrough Listen, an initiative to find signs of intelligent life in the universe, has detected 15 brief but powerful radio pulses emanating from a mysterious and repeating source – FRB 121102 – far across the universe.

Fast radio bursts are brief, bright pulses of radio emission from distant but largely unknown sources, and FRB 121102 is the only one known to repeat: more than 150 high-energy bursts have been observed coming from the object, which was identified last year as a dwarf galaxy about 3 billion light years from Earth.

Possible explanations for the repeating bursts range from outbursts from rotating neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields – so-called magnetars – to a more speculative idea: They are directed energy sources, powerful laser bursts used by extraterrestrial civilizations to power spacecraft, akin to Breakthrough Starshot’s plan to use powerful laser pulses to propel nano-spacecraft to Earth’s nearest star, Proxima Centauri.

“Bursts from this source have never been seen at this high a frequency,” said Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center and of the Breakthrough Listen program.</s>Researchers working on Breakthrough Listen – a major project which is scanning the stars in search of intelligent life – announced that they have detected the powerful radio bursts coming from a dwarf galaxy three billion light years away. The strange and rare signals are what is known as ‘fast radio bursts’ or FRBs but scientists are still unsure what causes them. However, what they do know is that they can emit as much energy in a second than the sun does in 10,000 years. They are exceptionally difficult to study as they can last as little as a millisecond and there is no way to predict when they are coming.

Since the first one was detected in 2007, there have been just a couple dozen more. Some predict they are natural, such as exploding stars, while other scientists believe that they are extra-terrestrial signals which were intentionally sent Earth’s way. The latest signals, dubbed FRB 121102, however, have been detected 15 times, which essentially rules out the possibility of a supernova or other natural occurrences.

Breakthrough Listen wrote in a statement: “Attempts to understand the mechanism that generates FRBs have made this galaxy a target of ongoing monitoring campaigns by instruments across the globe. “Possible explanations for FRBs range from outbursts from rotating neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields, to more speculative ideas that they are directed energy sources used by extraterrestrial civilisations to power spacecraft.” However, if the bursts are of alien origin, the likelihood of the beings that sent them still being alive are virtually nil, due to the sheer distance between Earth and the star cluster.

The statement continued: “When the recently-detected pulses left their host galaxy our entire Solar System was just two billion years old. “Life on Earth consisted of only single-celled organisms, and it would be another billion years before even the simplest multicellular life began to evolve.”

Nonetheless, the researchers say the new signals give them a better understanding of the mysterious FRBs. Breakthrough Listen postdoctoral researcher Vishal Gajjar said: “As well as confirming that the source is in a newly active state, the high resolution of the data obtained by the Listen instrument will allow measurement of the properties of these mysterious bursts at a higher precision than ever possible before.”</s>A radio astronomy project intended to find signals from intelligent aliens has announced the intriguing detections of “repeating” fast radio bursts (FRBs) from a single source in a galaxy three billion light-years distant. This is definitely an exciting development, but probably not for the reasons you think.

The ambitious $100 million Breakthrough Listen project aims to scan a million stars in our galaxy and dozens of nearby galaxies across radio frequencies and visible light in hopes of discovering a bona fide artificial signal that could be attributed to an advanced alien civilization. But in its quest, Breakthrough Listen has studied the signals emanating from FRB 121102 — and recorded 15 bursts — to better understand what might be causing it.

FRBs remain a mystery. First detected by the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia, these very brief bursts of radio emissions seemed to erupt from random locations in the sky. But the same location never produced another FRB, making these bizarre events very difficult to understand and impossible to track.

Hypotheses ranged from powerful bursts of energy from supernovae to active galactic nuclei to (you guessed it) aliens, but until FRB 121102 repeated itself in 2015, several of these hypotheses could be ruled out. Supernovae, after all, only have to happen once — this FRB source is repeating, possibly hinting at a periodic energetic phenomenon we don’t yet understand. Also, because FRB 121102 is a repeater, in 2016 astronomers could trace back the location of its source to a dwarf galaxy 3 billion light-years from Earth.

Now we ponder the question: What in the universe generates powerful short bursts of radio emissions from inside a dwarf galaxy, repeatedly?

Using the Green Bank Telescope in the West Virginia, scientists of Breakthrough Listen recorded 400 TB of data over a five hour period on Aug. 26. In these data, 15 FRBs were recorded across the 4 to 8 GHz radio frequency band. The researchers noted the characteristic frequency dispersion of these FRBs, caused by the signal traveling through gas between us and the source.

Now that we have dedicated and extremely detailed measurements of this set of FRBs, astrophysicists can get to work trying to understand what natural phenomenon is generating these bursts. This is the story so far, but as we’re talking radio emissions, mysteries and a SETI project, aliens are never far away…

It may be exciting to talk about the possibility of aliens generating this signal — as a means of communication or, possibly, transportation via beamed energy — but that avenue of speculation is just that: speculation. But to speculate is understandable. FRBs are very mysterious and, so far, astrophysicists don’t have a solid answer.

But this mystery isn’t without precedent.

In 1967, astronomers Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish detected strange radio pulses emanating from a point in the sky during a quasar survey to study interplanetary scintillation (IPS). The mysterious pulses had an unnaturally precise period of 1.33 seconds. At the time, nothing like it had been recorded and the researchers were having a hard time explaining the observations. But in the back of their minds, they speculated that, however unlikely, the signal might be produced by an alien intelligence.

During a dinner speech in 1977, Bell Burnell recalled the conundrum they faced:

“We did not really believe that we had picked up signals from another civilization, but obviously the idea had crossed our minds and we had no proof that it was an entirely natural radio emission. It is an interesting problem – if one thinks one may have detected life elsewhere in the universe how does one announce the results responsibly? Who does one tell first? We did not solve the problem that afternoon, and I went home that evening very cross here was I trying to get a Ph.D. out of a new technique, and some silly lot of little green men had to choose my aerial and my frequency to communicate with us.”

This first source was nicknamed “LGM-1” (as in “Little Green Men-1”), but far from being an artificial source, the duo had actually identified the first pulsar — a rapidly-spinning, highly magnetized neutron star that generates powerful emissions from its precessing magnetic poles as it rotates.

This is how science works: An interesting signal is detected and theories are formulated as to how that signal could have been generated.

In the case of LGM-1, it was caused by an as-yet-to-be understood phenomenon involving a rapidly-spinning stellar corpse. In the case of FRB 121102, it is most likely an equally as compelling phenomenon, only vastly more powerful.

The least likely explanation of FRB 121102 makes a LOT of assumptions, namely: aliens that have become so incredibly technologically advanced (think type II or even type III on the Kardashev Scale) that they can fire a (presumably) narrow beam directly at us through intergalactic space over and over again (to explain the repeated FRB detections) — the odds of which would be vanishingly low — unless the signal is omnidirectional, so they’d need to access way more energy to make this happen. Another assumption could be that intelligent, technologically advanced civilizations are common, so it was only a matter of time before we saw a signal like FRB 121102.

Or it could be a supermassive black hole (say) doing something very energetic that science can’t yet explain.

Occam’s razor suggests the latter might be more reasonable.

This isn’t to say aliens don’t exist or that intelligent aliens aren’t transmitting radio signals, it just means the real cause of this particular FRB repeater is being generated by a known phenomenon doing something unexpected, or a new (and potentially more exciting) phenomenon that’s doing something exotic and new. It doesn’t always have to be aliens.</s>Breakthrough Listen ­– a scientific programme searching for signs of extra-terrestrial life – has detected 15 short but powerful radio pulses emitting from a mysterious source, three billion light years from Earth.

These millisecond-long emissions are called fast radio bursts (FRBs) and are usually attributed to distant galaxies. The source in question – FRB 121102 – intriguingly, is the only one known to repeat. In fact, astronomers have detected more than 150 radio bursts since it was identified.

"Bursts from this source have never been seen at this high a frequency," said Andrew Siemion, director of the Breakthrough Listen programme. This piqued the interest of the Breakthrough team who alerted the astronomical community to the activity on Monday (28 August).

Various theories have been put forward to explain the phenomenon, one being that the signals are coming from a rotating neutron star with an incredibly strong magnetic field. However, some have dared to venture that the bursts from FRB 121102 could conceivably originate from huge transmitters powering an interstellar spacecraft.

"Fast radio bursts are exceedingly bright given their short duration and origin at great distances, and we haven't identified a possible natural source with any confidence," said Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who examined the feasibility of building such a device in a paper published earlier this year. "An artificial origin is worth contemplating and checking."

This is speculative work though and in the search for alien life, all other possibilities must be excluded first. "Science isn't a matter of belief, it's a matter of evidence. Deciding what's likely ahead of time limits the possibilities. It's worth putting ideas out there and letting the data be the judge."

The Breakthrough team observed the latest FRBs over a five-hour period on 26 August using the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, accumulating around 400 terabytes of data in the process. This data set was combed for evidence of the short radio bursts.

Whatever is generating the emissions coming from FRB 121102, our solar system was less than 2 billion years-old when they left their source, while life on Earth consisted of just single-celled organisms.

"Whether or not fast radio bursts turn out to be signatures of extra-terrestrial technology, Breakthrough Listen is helping to push the frontiers of a new and rapidly growing area of our understanding of the universe around us," Siemion said.
Researchers at the Breakthrough Listen initiative announce they have detected 15 new powerful fast radio bursts (FRB) from FRB 121102, located in a dwarf galaxy about three billion light-years from Earth. FRB 121102 was first detected in 2012, and gained further attention after FRBs were detected from there again in 2015.