Hello everyone, it's time for "Brother Tao to talk nonsense" again. Today I want to chat with you about something very interesting. Humanity's exploration of the universe will never end, but in the process of exploration, there are many embarrassing episodes that make people laug

Hello everyone, it's time for "Brother Tao to talk nonsense" again. Today I want to chat with you about something very interesting.

Humanity’s exploration of the universe will never end, but in the process of exploration, there are many embarrassing episodes that make people laugh. A group of Australian scientists have been searching for “mysterious signals from aliens” for 17 years, and finally discovered All this is just a funny mistake in the scientific world.

In New South Wales in southeastern Australia, there is a small town called Parkes, with a population of only 10,000.

The red landmark is Parks

Although Parkes City is sparsely populated, it is home to a very important observatory, because the observatory contains one of the most high-end astronomical equipment in human technology, a radio telescope. If you are not familiar with radio telescopes, here is a brief explanation in half a minute.

The picture below is an ordinary telescope.

The main principle of ordinary telescopes

is to image the lens and then magnify it through the eyepiece. In this sense, ordinary telescopes cannot really see "far away". The essence is actually "magnification". The magnification is generally between 7 and 10 times. After 10 times, the effect will be greatly reduced.

In order to see farther celestial objects, ordinary telescopes are obviously not up to the task. At this time, an astronomical optical telescope is needed, which looks like the picture below:

Astronomical optical telescope

The optical telescope has an observation wavelength between 400 and 700 nanometers. The use of visible light to achieve "distance viewing" also determines that it has great limitations - on cloudy days or at night, when visible light is blocked and covered, the optical telescope becomes ineffective. How does

solve this problem? Then you need to use a radio telescope, which looks like this:

It does not rely on "seeing" visible light, but relies on collecting electromagnetic waves emitted by celestial bodies for observation. In this way, it is completely immune to rainy weather, night and interstellar dust. Effects of occlusion.

In 1931, an American radio engineer discovered a radio interference that appeared every 24 hours. After extensive research, he believed that this was a beam of radio radiation waves coming from the center of the Milky Way .

To confirm his research, he set up a rotating antenna array 30 meters long and 3.6 meters high. Eight years later, in 1939, people drew the world's first radio sky map. This was not only the first time in human history to capture the signal of the central object of the Milky Way, but also announced the birth of radio astronomy . From then on, radio telescopes became One of the mainstream celestial observation tools in the scientific community.

The world's largest radio telescope in Guizhou Province, China - FAST

There is such a radio telescope in the Parkes Observatory in Australia. It receives and processes electromagnetic waves emitted to the earth from all corners of the vast universe day after day, and Draw them into pictures and put them on the astronomer's desk for study.

In 1998, at the Parkes Observatory in Australia, scientists started their busy day. Suddenly, among the electromagnetic wave signals fed back by the radio telescope, there was something particularly wrong with one of them, because its frequency was around 2.5 Hz, far exceeding the usual 1.4 ~1.8 Hz range, and within 7 minutes, it was transmitted every 22 seconds, a total of 16 times. Such regular and abnormal signals have to make people suspicious.

Australian scientists were confused and studied repeatedly with spectra and sky maps, but no one knew what kind of celestial body could emit such an electromagnetic signal, so they had to study it at a world academic conference more than two years later. It was proposed and immediately aroused strong interest from astronomers in other countries.

The radio telescope of Parkes Observatory in Australia

However, astronomers from other countries did not observe this phenomenon on their own radio telescopes. Even the United States, which had the most advanced ultra-long radio baseline array at the time, was unable to capture this signal. celestial body.The Americans arrogantly told Australian scientists: "Our radio telescope is 600,000 times more accurate than the human eye and 500 times more accurate than the Hubble Space Telescope. It can make people stand in New York and read Los Angeles newspapers clearly. If such a telescope cannot After observing the results, I think it is more likely that your drawing equipment has a regrettable malfunction. "

In 2007, at the Parkes Observatory in Australia, an intern named Emily discovered this strange and regular pattern again. The signal this time was shorter than the previous one, but the signal was stronger, but scientists still know nothing about it - it does not fit any existing physical model of outer space radiation at all.

Mysterious fast radio burst from outer space

But its signal strength is too great! Scientists at the Parkes Observatory believe that this is equivalent to releasing the same amount of energy released by the sun in 300,000 years in 0.01 seconds! The nuclear weapons of all human countries detonated together at the same time. They were nothing more than small firecrackers in the face of this fast radio burst.

The devastating gamma burst

In order to attract enough attention from the scientific community to this incident, scientists from the Parkes Observatory decided to publish a paper detailing the origins of this cosmic signal and proposing the commands hidden within it. The possibility of unease. In the paper, this mysterious fast radio burst was named "Pelliton"-this is a kind of winged stag in the "Dictionary of Fantasy Beasts". After the publication of the

paper, various opinions and opinions emerged one after another, but there was no conclusion that could convince the public. The only thing that can make everyone reach a consensus is that "Pelliton" cannot exist in the solar system or even the Milky Way. It is most likely to be A special signal from the extragalactic galaxy .

In the following years, "Pelliton" seemed like an elusive ghost, appearing two or three times a year, with no fixed time, and the signal strength fluctuated.

When science cannot explain the existence of "Pelliton" for the time being, human imagination comes into play.

The first is the "black hole evaporation theory".

This theory was proposed by the famous physicist Hawking in the 1970s. He provided a completely different possibility from previous black holes. In ordinary people's understanding, a black hole should be a "hole" that continuously absorbs matter from the inside. The gravity is so strong that light cannot escape. Therefore, conventional astronomical methods will not find anything when observing the area where the black hole is located. People can only judge whether there is a black hole through the abnormal trajectories of nearby celestial bodies.

However, Hawking believes that a "black hole" can also be understood from the opposite perspective - it is not desperately absorbing matter, but is constantly "pushing away" matter. The "push" is so strong that no elements or particles can get close to it. , since there is no matter inside, the black hole is equivalent to an absolute "zero energy" space field, and the black hole itself is constantly evaporating in this process.

The terrifying black hole

People can't help but think that "Pelliton" could be a radio burst produced when a black hole forcibly "pushes away" other celestial bodies on its way to evaporation?

The next thing that appeared was the " neutron star merger theory", which was the most accepted hypothesis for a long time at that time. Neutron stars are one of the densest objects in the universe. When two neutron stars collide and merge, they will release a huge gamma ray burst within a few seconds to hours. This kind of gamma ray burst is the only known gamma ray burst in the universe. The strongest burst phenomenon, the energy of a single photon emitted is usually hundreds of thousands of times that of sunlight.

Binary star merger

Gamma ray bursts can kill a certain range of life in the universe. What is even more deadly is that gamma ray bursts occur regularly. This is bad news for life in the universe, because this situation can prevent the universe from Life evolves into advanced species. In a Science paper from the 1980s, scientists speculated that gamma-ray bursts may have cleared about 90% of galactic space.It is very likely that our earth suffered a gamma ray burst 500 million years ago, which caused the Ordovician mass extinction, and 85% of all life was wiped out overnight.

Schematic diagram of a gamma ray burst

Some people pointed out that the "Pelliton" observed by the Parkes Observatory was probably a slight gamma ray burst that did not hit the earth. However, this view cannot explain why the signals of "Pelliton" are quite regular every time, almost every 20 seconds. After all, this feature does not exist in the more than 1,900 gamma ray bursts that humans have observed.

When all the "scientific conjectures" could not be justified, people had to turn their last attention to the "alien". Finally, a scientist carefully put forward his conjecture-"Pelliton" will Could it be a signal sent by aliens?

And this signal is not sent by aliens to contact the earth's civilization, but is just their daily communication with each other, because the radio wave leak happened to be captured by our radio telescope?

If all possible answers are eliminated, then the remaining options, no matter how outrageous, may be the truth. Moreover, in the following research, it seems that more and more evidence can support the "alien signal theory" - it is found that the physical source of the Pelliton signal is often accompanied by strong radiation bursts when it emits ray bursts. Out-of-band radiation, with frequencies between 2.3 and 2.5 GHz. This is a very typical characteristic of electromagnetic waves emitted by artificial equipment!

But there are also some surprising discoveries. Petrov, a staff member of the Parkes Observatory, has discovered a total of 25 "Pellitons" in the past few years. After research, she came to the conclusion that they are all from Monday to Sunday. Showed up at lunch time on Friday, no signal on holidays. Do "aliens", like us humans, also work on a weekend system? The answer to

was revealed in 2015.

It’s still Petrov above. She published a report and solved the mystery of "Pelliton" to the world - this mysterious signal that has been pursued by scientists for 17 years actually has its source in Two microwaves in the Parkes Observatory pantry.

Yes, it is the microwave oven commonly used in our ordinary families.

Countless scientists who had racked their brains and worked hard for "Pelliton" said before seeing Petrov's report that they would never accept such nonsense!

But after reading it, they fell into endless silence.

Petrov said that she first realized the wrong direction of her research when she was inspired by a lightning strike. At that time, the Parkes Observatory's radio telescope observed an unusual signal interference, which was later confirmed to be lightning striking a nearby base station. Petrov had an idea. Why had people always thought that "Pelliton" came from a distant extragalactic galaxy for a long time, not from the earth, or even from nearby?

After careful investigation, she finally found the source of the "Pelliton" - two microwave ovens with slightly damaged doors that leaked microwaves when turned. She gave perfect answers to all the previous doubts:

Microwave ovens are commonly used, but why is "Pelliton" sometimes available?

Because only when a reflective object with a "tinfoil"-like material is heated in the microwave oven, the radio waves will be emitted to the observation equipment through the cracks in the door.

Why is the signal of "Pelliton" so regular, with the emission interval always every 20 seconds?

Because the time it takes for that microwave oven to rotate once is exactly 20 seconds.

Why does "Pelliton" always appear at noon?

Because it was lunch time for the Parkes Observatory staff.

In the end, Petrov opened the running microwave oven in front of everyone, and completely copied an ultra-high-energy "Pelliton" under the eyes of the world, announcing this event that can be called astronomical. The birth of one of the biggest mistakes.

spent countless time, money and manpower, and finally got such a ridiculous result, which makes people have mixed feelings. But even so, at least we did not wrongfully accuse the "alien", and we did not take the wrong path, right? ?

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