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. 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. "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. 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. 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. 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.
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.