FIVE THINGS ABOUT ALIEN SPACESHIPS

1

THEY MAY BE FIRING UP

A team from Harvard University has speculated that mysterious energy flashes detected in galaxies far, far away may be caused by a species of super-advanced aliens firing up their interstellar spacecraft. The scientists at the respected Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics came up with the possible explanation for the existence of Fast Radio Bursts — or FRBs — that were discovered a decade ago. FRBs are intense radio pulses that last no more than a millisecond that emanate from remote galaxies billions of light years away.

2

THEY MAY BE SAILING

Prof. Avi Loeb and his colleague Dr. Manasvi Lingam, in a study accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, say the FRBs could be evidence of aliens and that the bursts may be leaked energy from unimaginably powerful transmitters capable of sending giant solar “sail ships” on voyages between stars.

3

THEY MAY BE GIGANTIC

By Loeb and Lingam’s calculations, the hypothetical alien ship would be gigantic. They calculated that a solar-powered radio transmitter capable of producing FRBs would beam sunlight at an area roughly twice the diameter of Earth. If a solar sail were massive enough to catch these rays, it would propel a million-ton payload — about equal to three Empire State Buildings glued together.

4

ARTHUR C. CLARKE PREDICTED THEM

Solar sailing has been a science-fiction concept for decades. Arthur C. Clarke described solar ships in his short story Sunjammer, published in 1964. Perhaps the most famous sci-fi solar sail appeared briefly in the 2002 movie Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, when villain Count Dooku travelled by a sail in his ship.

5

THEY MAY NOT EXIST

Some scientists have proposed that FRBs are the fault of massive neutron stars, suns that have collapsed into dense cores. Perhaps there exist stellar flares capable of spitting out a radio wave that travels across half the known universe. Or maybe vanishing black holes spewed the FRBs our way.