The Sounds of Space | FRB 121102

Fast Radio Bursts (or FRBs) have been piquing the interest of scientists and UFOlogists alike since the first observed signal in 2007 due to their extragalactic and otherwise unknown origin. While initially discovered through archived data dating back to 2001, we’ve now begun actively monitoring (via SETI – Breakthrough Initiative and others) for these bursts and despite mostly limited success, the first live signal (FRB 150418) was monitored on 9 January 2015 at the Parkes Observatory in Australia. [1]

In recent news, one particular signal FRB 121102 has quickly become viral, heavily sensationalized as “a signal from an alien civilization” (see one copy of the story here: https://www.cnet.com/news/frb-121102-fast-radio-burst-breakthrough-listen-alien-seti-space/). In the past 10 years we’ve seen over 15 unique bursts with a steady increase in the number of observations – so why is this burst so significant?

Well – with the exception of FRB 150418 and FRB 131104 (found to be “near’ Carina Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy), this is the most significant lead to date that we’ve had on the origination of these emissions.

This also presents a unique case as researchers had mostly observed these to be non-repeating; leading to origin theories such as “the merger of neutron stars or white dwarfs, or the collapse of a fast spinning and anomalously massive neutron star into a black hole”.[2] Since FRB 121102 is a repeating burst, this means that a subset of FRBs suggest a different origin, such as “giant pulses from neutron stars or bursts from magnetars”. [2]

So what is this?

I am by no means an astronomer, however I do work with audio in my spare time and felt the urge to listen to this myself. I quickly stumbled upon a Harvard database (link below) and downloaded a library of sound files generated from nine radio transients directed towards FRB 121102 (note that FRB 121102 has a dispersion chirp). [3]

After downloading these files I was pretty immediately familiarized with the high pitched chirp in all of these 2 second clips – they sound like an accidental export of a track at 100x its regular BPM.

I reduced the speed of 9 of these recordings (see below) to about 1% of the original speed and this quickly rendered an audible, irregularly oscillating hum in the range of approx. 20-400 Hz (low bass range). Note that I have not compressed the file and have ensured original values were retained when exporting. When comparing the original waveform (zoomed 100x) and the processed version, they appear as identical, suggesting no disturbance/noise due to processing.

I’ve isolated the peak activity and concatenated the files here for your interest: https://soundcloud.com/ceptive/nasa-audio-highlights-repeating-extragalactic-radio-signal-frb-121102

The audio does have a quite strange hum (much like the sound of a light-saber reverberated and reduced speed by 50%) which could be explained by noise, however there are two particularly interesting aspects to these recordings.

A NOTE FOR THE SKEPTICS

Before any analysis, I would like to note that I have received various feedback suggesting that any data here should not be taken seriously as the original transient was received on a band of 2.5-3.5 GHz and that the noise created by compression and transcoding is sufficient to render the data useless.

The example that one particular Reddit user presented was that “it would be like examining a photocopy of a picture and wondering why the pixels aren’t right”. This user does make a great point; it can be dangerous attempting to draw conclusions with noisy/abstract data. This doesn’t mean the data is useless, but rather that you have to be aware of your limitations due to noise.

As for the transcoding process – the band received was stretched and aligned to our audible range and it is entirely possible for certain relationships (e.g. consistencies, inconsistencies, negative space) to remain such as dynamic or pitch range, length ratios of intervals between pulses, etc. To counter our earlier example, think more along the lines of examining an image of an electro-magnetic emission outside of our visible spectrum (ex. Gamma rays) that has been transformed and aligned to the visible EM spectrum and then photocopied – and trying to examine details despite heavy pixilation.

AUDIO ANALYSIS

Let’s take a look at the actual audio we’ve processed. As aforementioned, there are two particularly interesting aspects found in these files.

Firstly, there are sharp spikes of activity in four of these audio files – they seem to exhibit a pulsing effect with each instance dropping in pitch (much like a pulsing Doppler effect). To provide an example and reference point, the effect sounds like an oscillating or pumping machine/engine is reaching maximum capacity. It is also entirely possible that due to transformation and compression of the radio-wave from its original band, during these activity peaks we are actually hearing the clearest version of this signal – and all other portions are simply noise.

The second interesting aspect is the negative space of files 7 and 9 during which a super low frequency hum of below 200 Hz and a high frequency of 15-20 kHz appear together (appearing at 3:30-4 minutes and 4:45-5 minutes into the below file). Again, please note that the high frequency could very well be a product of compression/transformation by researchers to produce the original file.

**Note the pitch range in all of the recordings – they cut off from the low end at around 400 Hz and cut in high end at 15-20 kHz. Also note that the oscillation of the hum at normal activity is not consistent. Finally, the pulses are perfectly separated by equal intervals between each pulse.

So, what does this mean? While this is definitely insufficient to make any sort of conclusion as to a possible origin, it does provide interesting and if nothing else abstract insight into the original data of this mysterious and repeating radio transient.

Could this be a pulsar or a magnetar? Could it be an engine reaching max capacity? Could this be one of our signals being distorted and deflected back to us? (EDIT: I am NOT theorizing that this is an alien signal – my “what-if” theory was purely for entertainment purposes)

For listening pleasure and intrigue I have compiled all of these processed files both in ZIP form below as well as a 4 minute wav file concatenating an original 2s FRB clip as well as peak activity from the files.

DOWNLOADS

Processed concatenated (peak activity) file: https://soundcloud.com/ceptive/nasa-audio-highlights-repeating-extragalactic-radio-signal-frb-121102 

YouTube video analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBEQXgUyR2c&t=1s

Processed ZIP files: https://www.mediafire.com/file/5tbqesqql0oc1ka/FRB%20121102%20Processed%20-%20ALL.zip // http://www.mediafire.com/file/6bboetwy7m1y4x3/The_Sound_of_Fast_Radio_Burst_FRB_121102_SPIKES_CONCATENATED.wav

Original files: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/QSWJE6

BIBLIOGRAPHY & RESOURCES

[1] “Cosmic radio burst caught red-handed”. Royal Astronomical Society. 19 January 2015.

[2] http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/833/2/177/meta

[3] https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/QSWJE6