Fast Radiowave bursts in TGD framework

Fast radio wave bursts: is life a cosmic fractal?

I encountered a highly interesting popular article (thanks for my friend Asta for the link) with title “Mysterious ‘fast radio burst’ detected closer to Earth than ever before” (this).

Fast radio wave bursts (FRBs) arrive from a distance of hundreds of millions of light years – the scale of a large void. If the energy of FRBs is radiated isotropically in all directions – an assumption to be challenged below – the total energy is of the same order of magnitude that the energy of the Sun produced during a century. There are FRBs repeating with a period of 16 days located to a distance of 500 million light years from Earth.

The latest bursts arrive from a distance of only about 30 thousand light years from our own galaxy Milky Way described in the popular article can be assigned with magnetar (see this) which is a remnant of neutron start and has extremely strong magnetic field of about 10¹¹ Tesla.

Below is the abstract of the article (this) reporting the discovery.

We report on International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL) observations of the soft γ ray repeater SGR 1935+2154 performed between 2020 April 28 and May 3. Several short bursts with fluence of ∼ 10^-7-10^-6 erg cm^-2 were detected by the Imager on-board INTEGRAL (IBIS) instrument in the 20-200 keV range. The burst with the hardest spectrum, discovered and localized in real time by the INTEGRAL Burst Alert System, was spatially and temporally coincident with a short and very bright radio burst detected by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) and Survey for Transient Astronomical Radio Emission 2 (STARE2) radio telescopes at 400-800 MHz and 1.4 GHz, respectively.

Its lightcurve shows three narrow peaks separated by ∼ 29 ms time intervals, superimposed on a broad pulse lasting ∼ 0.6 s. The brightest peak had a delay of 6.5 +/- 1.0 ms with respect to the 1.4 GHz radio pulse (that coincides with the second and brightest component seen at lower frequencies). The burst spectrum, an exponentially cutoff power law with photon index Γ =0.7_-0.2^+0.4 and peak energy E_p=65+/- 5 keV, is harder than those of the bursts usually observed from this and other magnetars.

By the analysis of an expanding dust-scattering ring seen in X-rays with the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory X-ray Telescope (XRT) instrument, we derived a distance of 4.4_-1.3^+2.8 kpc for SGR 1935+2154, independent of its possible association with the supernova remnant G57.2+0.8. At this distance, the burst 20-200 keV fluence of (6.1+/- 0.3)× 10^-7 erg cm^-2 corresponds to an isotropic emitted energy of ∼ 1.4× 10³⁹ erg. This is the first burst with a radio counterpart observed from a soft γ ray repeater and it strongly supports models based on magnetars that have been proposed for extragalactic fast radio bursts.

What could be the interpretation of the finding in the TGD framework? The weirdest feature of the FRB is its gigantic total energy assuming that the radiation is isotropic during the burst. This assumption can be challenged in the TGD framework, where the stellar systems are connected to a monopole flux tube network and radiation flows along flux tubes, which can also branch. This brings strongly in mind the analog of a nervous system in cosmic scales and this analogy is used in what follows.

1. The duration of pulses is few milliseconds: the duration of nerve pulses is the same. Is this a wink-wink to the Poirots of astrophysics?
2. Bursts can arrive regularly for instance with a period of T=16.35 days (see this). This brings in the mind of astro-Poirot biorhythm, in particular EEG rhythms. This would not be the only such rhythms: also the period of T_alpha=160 minutes, for which have proposed an interpretation as a cosmic analog of alpha rhythm is known (see this). The ratio T/T_α=147.15 would give for the analogous brain rhythm the value of 14.7 seconds.
3. Let us assume that stellar systems indeed form an analog of neural network connected by flux and assume that the topology of this network is analogous to that defined by axons. In TGD framework neural communications between neurons occur actually by using dark photons with effective Planck constant h_eff=nh₀ along the flux tubes with the velocity of light so that feedback from brain and even from the magnetic body of brain back to sensory organs as virtual sensory input becomes possible. The function of nerve pulses is to connect the outgoing branch of the flux tube associated with the axon and those associated with dendrites of the post-synaptic neuron toa longer flux tubes by using neurotransmitters as relays.

Remark: In the TGD based model of brain there would be also flux tube network analogous to the meridian system of Eastern medicine and responsible for the holistic and spatial aspects of consciousness whereas nervous system would be responsible for the linear and temporal aspects of conscious experience.

In any case, the idea that pulses could have mass of order few Planck masses is attractive. In the biology large neuron with radius about 10^-4 meters has mass of order Planck mass. For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

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