SETI Talks: Mysterious Radio Signals in the Milky Way - Livestream

At the end of 2021, a group of astronomers detected unusual signals from deep in the heart of the Milky Way. More recently, another group happened upon a celestial object releasing giant bursts of energy, unlike anything ever seen before. These mysterious signals, which seem natural, were discovered using recently built radio astronomy facilities, such as the Murchison Widefield Array telescope and the ASKAP radio telescope, both in Australia.

These objects are unique so far, and radio astronomers around the world are looking back in their data to see if there have been similar detections in other parts of the galaxy. Are these rare one-off events or a vast new population we never noticed before?

It’s still unclear what truly are, but it’s inevitable that within the next decade, with the arrival of the transcontinental Square Kilometer Array (SKA), more of them may be found and help astronomers to solve mysteries like their origin.

To discuss these discoveries, we invited two researchers: Tara Murphy, professor at the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Sydney, and Natasha Hurley-Walker, head of the extragalactic radio astronomy group at the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, both are involved in the recent publication of these mysterious and transient signals.

Both researchers will describe the instrument used for these remarkable discoveries, some hypotheses on the nature of those signals and discuss the golden future of radio astronomy. Of course, we will discuss whether we can reject an artificial origin for those signals. Are we sure that those are not simply advanced civilizations trying to communicate with us?