Hello and welcome back to See the Pattern. In this week's episode we will
be looking at fast radio bursts. Understanding what they are what the
mainstream theories behind them are and then comparing it to how the electric
universe views fast radio bursts. They were first detected back in 2007 by
Duncan Lorimer and they are characterized by a very bright and very
brief burst of radio photons and they've been detected at frequencies ranging
from 400 megahertz to 8 gigahertz. One important characteristic is the arrival
time of the frequency components is dispersed, which is consistent with the
fact that they have propagated through cold plasma. Initially it was thought
that they were galactic in origin, so was in the Milky Way, but the mainstream
consensus is now that they are extra galactic in origin and in fact very very
remote; so from the farthest edges of our visible universe. One of the
challenges facing the theoretical model is finding a physical mechanism which
could explain the vast amounts of energy radiated over such a short time scale
and again here one of the problems is the fact that mainstream puts these
objects at such a remote distance and that would require them to be incredibly
energetic in order for us to actually be able to receive them. The sheer
variety and complexity also adds to this problem. Some are polarized, and some are
not, some have double or triple peaks the rest just a single one, many have complex
micro structures, and only two so far have repeated and the most famous one is
FRB 12 1102 which has a modulated pulse shape with no apparent periodicity.
Now just to give you an idea of what these sounds like so I've downloaded the
radio file which has been converted into sound, so here is FRB121102 from one of
its repetitions and when you listen to it
what's interesting so that's at normal speed and let's now play it at
slower speed
and the interesting thing I think is when you listen to this there is a very
clear drop down in frequency. So it goes from a higher note to a lower note as it
goes through, like a of ringing down mechanism. What's also interesting is the
difference between the attack and the decay phase so the attack is as it ramps
up and you can see that it ramps up relatively quickly and the decay is
longer that the time it takes for it to go back down is longer than the attack
phase. Now the lack of observational data has led to a large number of theories
which can be broken down into two main groups. One which has an Astrophysical
mechanism and one which is a mathematical physics based mechanism so
let's run through some of these current mainstream theories and try and
understand how from their point of view they could generate these FRBs and let's
look at some of the limitations of some of those models. First up is neutron star
mergers now it's believed that these sorts of mergers should happen quite
often and this theory would imply that a large number of these mergers should
produce FRBs so we would expect to see many more
FRB's then we actually see so that's one of the problems with this theory now
after the stars merged the pulsar wind produced could explain a repeated FRB
but that would happen between 1 and 10 years after the event
and again we would expect to see more repeated signals. Neutron star white
dwarf mergers. As the white dwarf approaches the neutron star matter is
pulled away from the white dwarf and they speculate that the material pulled
off is magnetized and then as it falls onto the neutron star
these would release radiation in bursts. Repeated encounters could cause
repeated FRB's. Binary star - white dwarf merger. Now here
when they merged they would produce a giant rotating magnetized white dwarf
which would generate FRBS via the twisted differential rotation of the
magnetic fields and the subsequent magnetic re-connections when they break
similar to I suppose the way that mainstream views the the 11-year cycle
on the Sun. The fact that the center spins quicker and the magnetic field
lines become stretched and then periodically they kind of reconnect
White dwarf - black hole merges now in this scenario an accretion disk is
expected to form around the black hole which could power a high-speed wind
around the entire black hole accretion disk
forming a sort of corona and the interaction between the magnetic field
lines and the corona would create flux tubes which episodically would eject
relativistic magnetized plasma and these blobs could occasionally collide causing
catastrophic magnetic reconnection releasing a possible FRB like signal now
as you can see there are lots of ifs and buts in this type of scenario let alone
the fact that they have we ever seen a black hole. Neutron star - black hole
merger now here the magnetic field lines from the neutron star thread around the
black hole and charged particles in the neutron star are propelled along the
magnetic field lines generating radiation similar possibly to an FRB
Pulsar and a black hole merger. Here you would have a rapidly spinning pulsar
near a black hole which could produce an enhanced giant mic pulse similar to a
non-repeating FRB. Two black holes which are caught in its own in their gravity
wells spiraling in on themselves. Now if one of those carries a charge it would
induce a magnetic dipole and as the separation decreases the magnetic flux
change would be rapid which would lead to particles bunching and hence could
lead to the emission of radiation similar to an FRB. The collapse of a
supermassive neutron star into a black hole now upon collapse an event horizon
would likely form before most of the mass and the radiation was able to
escape the magnetic field lines in theory are forbidden from piercing the
event horizon and so the magnetosphere would be left behind and this,
potentially as it expands outward, could generate something similar to an FRB.
A pulsar in a nebula. So a young rapidly rotating pulsar which may generate giant
pulses resides within a nebula then the plasma wind generated by the Pulsar
would generate a sort of bubble inside of this nebula. Now any subsequent
outburst will rapidly decelerate an impact at the boundary creating a
gamma-ray burst and possibly an FRB. Unfortunately this cannot account for
repeated FRB's. A magnetar hyper flare within a nebula
so similar to the previous one so where you create a bubble but in this scenario
you would expect to see optical flashes as well as the the gamma-ray bursts and
then the FRBs. So far for any of the FRBs no optical
flashes have been detected. Now another problem with any of the hypothesis that
that suggests flaring, is that the upper limit that these flares could produce is
about ten thousand times smaller than the energy that would be required to
produce the FRBs that we have seen
Active Galactic Nuclei. So a hot accretion disk is formed as matter is
captured and spirals into a moderately sized black hole. Now some of this
falling gas and dust is confined to the poles and ejected in to relativistic
Jets. Hot gas clouds of varying densities around the black hole forming a toroid
that extends a few parsecs from the black hole. As the Active Galactic Nuclei
Jets interact with a cloud it becomes narrowly co-laminated meaning that they
are parallel beams and no longer spread out, though the beams encounter material
at the center of the host galaxy and this produces strong turbulence created
by plasma instabilities. The electrons and the ions in this plasma separate and
these regions are called cavitons and have strong electrostatic fields. To me
this looks very similar to to what we would describe as a double layer but
anyway the the electrons that pass through the caviton are coherently
scattered and emit strongly beamed radiation pulses which would be
consistent with an FRB. Now if they are if there is a local magnetic field than
a hundred percent polarization which is what we see in FRB 12 1102, so our
repeating one, would be extremely difficult to account
for in this model unfortunately. So a neutron star which has an asteroid or
comet impact on it problem here is that the impact has to be pretty large and
the comet or asteroid has to be made of either nickel or iron now as it impacts
an expanding plasmoid fireball would be launched along the magnetic field lines
and magnetic reconnection at the collision site would accelerate
electrons and anti electron pairs to relativistic speeds which could create a
non-repeating FRB. Now a body orbiting a pulsar if the body was massive enough to
survive a close encounter without evaporating or breaking up then the
highly magnetized pulsar wind would induce an electromagnetic field around
the body and this would create Alvin wings as the Pulsar winds comb the field
lines now these Alfven wings would destabilize
the plasma near the body surface to excite a coherent emission. Now far from
the pulsar companion the emission would be convicted with the wind
relativistically along the Alfven wings to form synchrotron radiation whose
emissions would be consistent with an FRB
Now interestingly enough the emission is only observable when the companion is
aligned between pulsar and Earth and potentially this could repeat
periodically and the signal would consist of between 1 and 4 Peaks a few
milliseconds apart. Now other models that we don't really have time to go into in
detail include starquakes, so like an earthquake but a starquake
Lightning in pulsars, a wandering pulsar beam, tiny electromagnetic explosions
which would be some form of remnant from the Big Bang, a white hole explosion
superconducting strings, and an alien light sail. They are all still in the
running for theories to explain FRB's. So how does
the electric universe look at these objects? First of all let's let's
understand possible mechanisms within an electric universe which could create
these signals. So first of all when charged particles accelerate within an
electric field they emit what is called synchrotron radiation previously we
talked about the fact that mainstream astronomers believe that the FRBs
are outside of our Milky Way and in fact they believe they are some of the
farthest away objects within our universe you know three to four billion
light-years away but what if they were in fact occurring in our local
neighborhood as part of the electric star process. Plasma discharge in the
form of an exploding double layer could accelerate particles creating the same
type of radiation. Now Hannes Alfven actually thought that the exploding
double layers should be considered a new class of celestial objects. As we have
previously discussed Z pinches in the plasma filaments could lead to galaxy
formation and star formation and we have seen that the variation in the incoming
Birkland current can change the behaviour of the star drammatically potentially
causing fissioning. Now remember we talked about this in the stellar
evolution episode. What if the incoming current did rise but it wasn't
strong enough to cause the fissioning but instead caused a local change on the
surface where the double layers expanded from the tufts very rapidly and exploded
creating a sudden release of energy similar to an FRB
or gamma-ray burst now we've already seen that this is what might have caused
the brown dwarf x-ray flare in the electric stellar evolution episode so is
it that much further to suggest that FRBs might be produced by Suns in an
electric Star model. Who knows? The fact is we still have many theories
to explore a lot of the theories that have been
covered today unfortunately cannot explain repeated signals. There are a few
that can. Hopefully as we look at more of these we open our eyes up to the fact
that potentially we are living in an electric universe we may be able to
explain these in a completely different way to what mainstream wants. I hope you
found this an informative journey through some of mainstream's ideas on
FRBs and a comparison to where we would view it in an electric universe model as
always be brave, be curious, the truth is waiting for us until next time