Six years ago, astronomers detected a brief, very high energy burst from outside of our galaxy. It remains unexplained.
What could have caused this? Two theories:
One idea is that it may be part of the energy released when a pair of superdense neutron stars collide and merge. Such an event is thought by some scientists to be the cause of one type of gamma-ray burst, but the only radio emission seen so far from these has been from the long-lived "afterglow" that follows the original burst.
Another, more exotic, candidate is a burst of energy from an evaporating black hole. Black holes, concentrations of mass so dense that not even light can escape their powerful gravity, can lose mass and energy through a process proposed by famed British physicist Stephen Hawking. The newly-discovered radio burst, the researchers said, might be the "last gasp" of a black hole as it finally evaporates completely.
A practice firing from the invasion armada's main weaponry is, of course, another, more obvious explanation.
(via Slashdot)
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