For more than 150 years, people have not stopped trying to contact representatives of extraterrestrial civilizations. Until now, there is no definitive evidence that someone tried to answer us. Nevertheless, many strange signals came from the great void, the origin of which researchers are still trying to explain.
10. Mysterious drone
Radio waves can travel in outer space without any problems, they are emitted by many celestial bodies. For example, our Milky Way galaxy makes hissing noises.
In July 2006, researchers launched a weather balloon from NASA's Columbia Research Balloon Center in Palestine, Texas. Scientists were looking for signs of heating from first generation stars in the upper atmosphere, at an altitude of 36.5 km, where it passes into airless space. Instead, they heard an unusual radio hum. It came from deep space, and researchers still do not know for sure what caused it and where its source is.
9. Soothing sounds of Miranda
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Uranus has five large satellites, and the closest to it is Miranda.
The planet, which stands out among others with an unusual shape, is called the "moon of Frankenstein". It is seven times smaller than our Moon, but its surface is pitted with canyons that are 12 times deeper than the Grand Canyon in Colorado. It is also known for emitting radio noise recorded by the Voyager 2 spacecraft. This "hum" was so entertaining that NASA even released an album of "Miranda tunes."
8. Ominous sounds of Jupiter
On June 27, 1996, the Galileo spacecraft launched by NASA to explore the largest planet in the solar system approached one of its moons, Ganymede.
Rotating in the satellite orbit, the device registered the signals that it transmitted to Earth. Researchers believe they come from charged particles accumulating in the moon's magnetosphere.
7. Sounds of the stars
The Kepler Space Observatory was launched on March 7, 1999 with the aim of finding habitable planets.
During the trip, the device recorded data on the light curves of the stars. The frequencies of the brightness change in these curves are very similar to the audio frequencies that are elusive to the human ear. However, using the Fourier transform, the researchers brought the frequency to an audible level.
6. Radio signal SHGb02 + 14a
The SETI @ home search for extraterrestrial intelligence, launched in 1999, has attracted millions of personal computer owners to process the signals received by the Arecibo Observatory. The most hopeful thing was the radio signal SHGb02 + 14a, which arrived in March 2003. It was recorded three times and came from the area between the constellations of Pisces and Aries. True, the nearest stars in that direction are thousands of light-years from Earth.
5. Strange sounds of Saturn
The unmanned spacecraft Cassini-Huygens, sent to Saturn in 1997, was the first to enter the atmosphere of the "ringed" planet.
But even at a distance of 377 million kilometers from Saturn, the apparatus began to register radio waves emanating from the auroral regions at the planet's poles. This ominous noise has a rather complex structure, with a lot of rising and falling tones, as well as a lot of frequency and timing variations.
4. X-ray signal
Studying in detail the data obtained by the orbiting X-ray observatories Chandra (NASA) and XMM-Newton (European Space Agency), the researchers found an unexplained X-ray signal in the cluster of galaxies in the constellation Perseus.
Scientists believe that the signal is associated with dark matter (that is, matter that does not interact with electromagnetic radiation), which occupies 26% of our universe. Astrophysicists suggest that such X-ray radiation can occur during the decay of sterile neutrinos - a hypothetical type of neutrino that interact with ordinary matter only gravitationally. Some astrophysicists believe sterile neutrinos will help shed light on dark matter.
3. Disturbing sound of a black hole
The sound of a black hole was recreated by Edward Morgan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
To do this, he used data on the GRS 1915 + 105 star system in the constellation Eagle, discovered in 1992. It is the largest stellar mass black hole in our Milky Way. It is 14 (± 4) times heavier than the Sun and is located at a distance of 36 thousand light years from the Earth. From a musical point of view, the radio noise from the black hole corresponds to the note "B flat", only 57 octaves lower than the "C" of the third octave. And people are able to perceive by ear only 10 octaves. This is the lowest note recorded in the universe.
2. Pulses of radio emission at the Parkes telescope
Between February 2011 and January 2012, the Parkes radio telescope in Australia recorded 4 pulses of radio waves. Each one lasted milliseconds, but they were all incredibly powerful - it would take our Sun 300,000 years to generate the energy of a single pulse. There are several theories to explain the origin of the outbreaks. Among them is the collision of magnetars (neutron stars with the strongest magnetic fields).
1. Pulses of radio emission at the Arecibo telescope
On November 2, 2012, the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico recorded a short radio burst similar to those recorded by Parkes.
The researchers made calculations that showed that such impulses occur 10,000 times a day. Astrophysicists are now building new observatories and also using the power of telescopes in Australia, South Africa and Canada to understand why these radio signals are coming in so often and what they mean.