of microwave noodles and extragalactic signals

FRBs just can’t seem to catch a break this month. First, they were an alien signal. Then just as quickly as they were attributed to aliens because the Daily Fail decided to get creative with two out of context words and no one seemed to bother to fact check them, the bursts were called a false signal caused by microwave interference. Not just any microwave interference mind you, but the kind in which you warm up leftovers according to a widely quoted story for which, again, reporters decided that reading the actual paper is for chumps. Popular Science seems to have been the only mainstream publication to actually read the whole thing and point out that no, it’s not open microwave doors creating FRBs, but an extraterrestrial source. While the bursts seen by Parkes and mislabeled as a potential alien communication may have been coming from the kind of interference generated by a prematurely open microwave door by the media are likely just interference from cell towers or another source emitting as the same frequency, there is a batch of FRBs that came to us from as far away as 3 billion light years.

Hold on though, how are some FRBs a case of mistaken identity and others are coming all the way from intergalactic space all from the same telescope? Well, the first study deliberately took what were thought to be 11 signals deserving extra attention and processed their distribution to see if they could find any patterns that would give us a clue as to their origins. Unlike you were told by just about everyone, it probably was not aliens, or even microwaves, since there was a string correlation between signal distribution and a constant we use to sync equipment placed across the world. What exactly emitted the signals we don’t know, but it’s likely fairly humdrum communications equipment. The second study tried to figure out if they could generate a fake signal with microwave ovens, which they could, and then used the data they collected to ferret out whether the FRBs they tracked matched these control perytons.

This is where the story gets interesting. After the second team found matches between the two in terms of frequency, CNET and most others called it a day and told the world that those goofy scientists think aliens were contacting them because they couldn’t wait for their nachos to warm up, adding their inability to fact check to their inability to read an entire paper. But when taking a close look at the distributions form their perytons and genuine FRBs, the researchers found key differences pointing to the bursts coming to us from deep space. Unlike the perytons, FRBs did not have predictable clustering when all candidate signals were included in the analysis, mostly did not line up with the position of the stars in our own galaxy, and one could not match any of their control signals to such an extent that it would be impossible to mistake it for a peryton. So this means that FRBs are indeed extragalactic signals from violent cosmic events and SURONs along with exotic events like neutron star collisions and quakes, are back on the table.

Now that we have the science sorted out, I’d like to turn back to the media for just a moment to humbly ask what the hell is wrong with those who take anything the Daily Mail says and rush to publish something, anything, no matter how poorly researched, distorted, or outright full of crap it happens to be as long as they can publish it quickly enough to ride the Google Trends waves to some extra views. Yes, the media was always awful at reporting science, but this is a rather remarkable low. As mentioned above, reporters who couldn’t be bothered to read whatever the paper they’re covering said made up some alien contact theories no one entertained, said that experiments to rule out human interference with results was in fact proof that the “aliens” were microwave ovens, and proceeded to cast scientists who were just trying to study an interesting phenomenon as the lab-coat wearing version of the Keystone Kops. Your readers deserve real news, written by people who know how to research stories. They deserve better than what you throw at them without a second thought as you rush to the next SEO-dictated topic.

See: E. Petroff, et. al. (2015). Identifying the source of perytons at the Parkes radio telescope arXiv: 1504.02165v1