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Andromeda321 t1_je0nirk wrote

Astronomer here! I would tread very carefully in thinking this is all sorted. Why? The sky area for this gravitational wave alert was over 8000 square degrees, which is like 20% of the sky! And CHIME finds like one or two FRBs a day- eventually one is gonna overlap with a gravitational wave signal!

Now, the team argues this is more likely than chance because the rough distance estimate from the FRB matches that of the gravitational wave signal. Problem there is if you look at the GW signal’s stats, it’s from 280-740 million years distant is the range you could get from this signal. That is huge! Millions of galaxies in that amount of sky at that amount of distance, in fact! If you ask me, really not convincing over just a random coincidence.

Finally, if FRBs were correlated with gravitational waves, another question pops up- why haven’t we seen this happen for other, better localized, events? Instead it’s very clear the rate of FRBs and the rate of what creates gravitational wave signals (ie neutron star mergers if you follow this paper’s argument) are super out of sync. There just plain aren’t enough mergers to explain the giant numbers or FRBs- some of which also repeat, which an explosive one off event like a merger doesn’t support.

TL;DR I remain skeptical until better evidence is shown, because correlation does not equal causation

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[deleted] t1_je0qwbk wrote

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[deleted] t1_je1m98f wrote

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[deleted] t1_je1mstc wrote

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Negative_Gravitas t1_je0qrdz wrote

This is exactly the information I clicked in looking for. Thank you.

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johnla t1_je2a60u wrote

Yea.... me too.. I totally understood all of that. Why don't you ELI5 for the people who don't understand it. Unlike you and me. HAHA. Because we understand it completely.

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loulan t1_je1gmyc wrote

On the one hand there is a paper published in Nature Astronomy, but on the other hand, there is this guy on reddit who said "astronomer here".

Case closed I guess, the guy on reddit sounded really confident.

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clayt6 t1_je1k2sj wrote

Just for the record, Andromeda321 is a postdoctoral fellow in astronomy at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who specializes in radio astronomy, so I really would take what she has to say seriously. The researchers behind this new study also acknowledge at the end of the article there's a 5% chance that the apparent connection between the FRB and the gravitational waves is entirely a coincidence, which is pretty darn significant (and possibly up for debate). I believe that's the main point she wanted to make.

If a causal connection is confirmed, these results are very intriguing and fascinating. But as is often the case in science, independent and more exhaustive confirmation is key before we get too excited.

With that being said, you're definitely not wrong to be skeptical of a seemingly random redditor's claim lol

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loulan t1_je1kive wrote

I have a permanent research position myself (not in astronomy) and I sure hope people take what I say on reddit with a grain of salt, even when it's in my field haha.

The comment above just sounded way too convinced to me. Especially since they obviously read the comment, but not the paper...

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Negative_Gravitas t1_je1lmoz wrote

On the one hand, there is an honest endeavor to seek more information about a particular question and being grateful for receiving that information (from a very likely reliable source) without drawing any conclusion as to the question's final resolution, but on the other hand, there is snark and completely baseless assumptions about a stranger's state of mind. Case definitely closed.

But you're right, and it's kind of amazing: even without the slightest shred of evidence, that guy on Reddit surely did sound really confident about what I was thinking.

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pikabuddy11 t1_je29va2 wrote

On another hand we used to always joke in my graduate astronomy department that if an article was published in Nature then it was wrong.

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elverloho t1_je1ohfv wrote

Hi, Astronomer! I've been looking for someone to ask this question for a long time. Could FRBs be coming from different kinds of events (instead of all having the same kind of cause) and are there differences between FRBs (a sort of an FRB "fingerprint" if you will) by which to classify them into different categories?

Like, could some FRBs be the result of neutron star collisions while other FRBs are the result of alien hyperdrives and could we possibly tell the difference based on what we can observe?

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evydude456 t1_je1ul5m wrote

(Different) radio astronomer here! There are two main types of FRBs: repeaters and non-repeaters. While we are far from understanding the source of every single FRB, it’s looking more and more likely that there is not one single explanation behind every single one. It’s possible that non-repeating bursts come from cataclysmic events like mergers between neutron stars or other heavy objects, while the sources of repeating FRBs could be compact objects like pulsars and magnetars, which have been observed to emit bright single pulses in radio waves.

In fact, CHIME, the radio observatory mentioned in this article, recently published the first large-scale catalog of FRBs. From the growing sample we’ve seen, it looks like there are other differences in the bulk populations of repeating and non-repeating FRBs— things like their pulse shapes as well as their brightnesses at different frequencies. This could also point to there being multiple sources of FRBs, but again, we’re not quite confident enough to draw any strict conclusions.

I will say that there’s no evidence that any FRB we’ve discovered so far has come from any extraterrestrial intelligence or non-natural sources. That’s why we’ve got to keep looking!

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Andromeda321 t1_je2wktu wrote

Couldn’t have said it better. Thanks for stepping in! :)

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belczyk t1_je1fjit wrote

When post starts with "Astronomer here" one knows there will be grilling and lots of respectful "maybe, but...". Thank you for your time, it is much appreciated!

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PandaEven3982 t1_je27u7h wrote

Smiles and nods. Right now, our understanding of EM phenomenon greatly outstrips our understanding of mass/gravity by multiple orders of magnitude. All of our understanding of gravity is phenomenology.

Can we wait till the math improves? :-)

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no-mad t1_je2qhdz wrote

On the positive side, If it is not gravity waves, that is a big one to cross off the list of possibilities.

do you have an opinion on what the FRB's might be?

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Andromeda321 t1_je2w37e wrote

Magnetars. We have traced some FRB-like signals to a magnetar within our own galaxy so it’s pretty convincing a lot of them are created by even higher energy magnetars, IMO.

I feel that then begs the next question which is if ALL FRBs are created via the same mechanism, but I’m not sure we have a convincing answer there yet.

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no-mad t1_je2zyj7 wrote

So interesting and curious. I wish i followed thru and became an astronomer.

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Tainticle t1_je1mzzl wrote

Was hoping for this post. Lotta love to 'Dr. Astronomer here'!

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Available-Camera8691 t1_je2tpf1 wrote

So after skimming your response, I am gathering that I should absolutely treat this as gospel and consider it sorted, and spread this information to others.

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spsheridan OP t1_je1i8ca wrote

This paper was submitted to and published by Nature Astronomy. Presumably, it was peer-reviewed before being published. If the probability of the FRB being associated with the gravitational wave is not much better than random chance, what does that say about the peer review process at Nature Astronomy? Is it broken?

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johnkingeu t1_je1nboj wrote

Peer review really just means it passes basic sense checks by a couple of peers, it isn’t necessarily an exhaustive process. It’s pretty common for papers to get refuted later, in the much more exhaustive long term peer review process that is science, in which a whole scientific community picks the paper apart over time. Unfortunately this can make it difficult for people outside the field to know which papers are currently considered to be authoritative and which aren’t, publication in a top ranked peer reviewed journal means it’s worthy of consideration but could still be completely wrong.

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brian9000 t1_je1oyi6 wrote

One example is the recent “room temperature superconductor” hullabaloo that happened over at /r/physics

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DarkElation t1_je384t0 wrote

This is hilarious to me because “peer reviewed” became some kind of messianic gatekeeper of the truth during the pandemic. Then it was used as a bludgeon to censor people saying what you just said three years ago.

I’m still banned from a sub for linking the cdc’s vaccine page and how it doesn’t prevent transmission.

Sorry to go there but your comment really struck me.

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A_Suspicious_Fart t1_je1v3uq wrote

I think you are misunderstanding the process of peer review. Yes, it was peer reviewed during the publication process. However, that does not mean there are no flaws in the analysis, or the conclusions drawn from the analysis in the paper. There are a lot of published papers in reputable journals that have been peer reviewed, but still haven’t been tested well enough to confirm the claims of the authors. In some cases the claims are just wrong. This process is iterative, and can take many years. We should never take any claims, no matter how compelling as gospel. Instead they should be met with varying levels of skepticism.

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Andromeda321 t1_je2x0wt wrote

Well, publishing in Nature is actually interesting because it has a 50% retraction rate over a longer period of time. They’re an interesting journal because it’s known for taking the stance of “we would rather be sure to be the ones to publish the highest impact papers of all time even if we know a lot of these won’t stand up to the scrutiny of the scientific process over coming years.” Hope that makes sense.

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HazelMoon t1_je1uyi0 wrote

I followed your argument as much as I could - thank you for your clear writing style - at least I have a chance of understanding a little when an expert writes like you do!

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thara209 t1_je2j38h wrote

If you don’t mind me asking, What kind of better localize events?

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Andromeda321 t1_je2wbet wrote

This particular event did not have all gravitational wave detectors online. This means the uncertainty area is really big (aka a quarter of the sky). If you have all three detectors online as once you can get it to a much smaller sky area (~100 square degrees), as well as much more precise distance estimates.

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cabezatuck t1_je3ef2b wrote

Thank you for your explanation. I found it very interesting. If you are skeptical of the gravitational wave explanation presented in the team’s findings, what in your opinion could be a plausible source for the many FRBs detected?

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Andromeda321 t1_je3y1r9 wrote

Magnetars. We have traced some FRB-like signals to a magnetar within our own galaxy so it’s pretty convincing a lot of them are created by even higher energy magnetars, IMO.

I feel that then begs the next question which is if ALL FRBs are created via the same mechanism, but I’m not sure we have a convincing answer there yet.

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Sao_Gage t1_je51oix wrote

Isn’t the traditional thinking that some FRB’s are correlated with magnetars? I just dove into this the other day and that was the impression I came away with, of course nothing being fully conclusive.

I gather not all FRB’s have the same characteristics nor are they suitably explained by the same phenomena?

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