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Repeating radio signals coming from a mystery source far beyond the Milky Way have been discovered by scientists. While one-off fast radio bursts (FRBs) have been detected in the past, this is the first time multiple signals have been detected coming from the same place in space.
FRBs are radio signals from deep space that last for just a few milliseconds. Since their discovery over a decade ago, scientists have been searching for more to try to understand their origin. At present, there are several theories as to what they could be, with most involving some cataclysmic event like a supernova or a neutron star collapsing into a black hole.
All of the events seen so far appear to have been one-offs, with subsequent observations failing to find follow-up bursts coming from the same position as the original. However, an international team of researchers has now discovered an additional 10 bursts coming from the same direction as FRB 121102, using the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico.
\Nearly ten years ago, fast radio bursts lasting just a few milliseconds astonished scientists as they seemed to be originating from outside the galaxy. It was hence understood that these must have been very strong to be able to pass through such a large space in order to be observed in our galaxy and on Earth. After another series of bursts emerged in 2012, scientists got an opportunity to monitor its area of the sky through the use of the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico and the Arecibo radio dish in Puerto Rico. Around nine bursts had been discovered over a month’s span. Later, European and American radio interferometer arrays were able to locate the bursts to an area within one-hundredth of an arcsecond, lying within 100 light years in diameter.
Subsequently, deep imaging of that region by the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii showed a faint dwarf galaxy. It was also found later that the galaxy continuously emits low-level radio waves. This is typical of a galaxy which has an active nucleus that indicates that it has a super-massive black-hole in the centre. This newly discovered galaxy displays a low abundance of elements other than hydrogen and helium. This implies that this galaxy was formed during the universe’s middle age. Moreover, the fact that such fast radio bursts originate from this galaxy suggests that this galaxy may have a connection to other such events occurring in similar dwarf galaxies.
In a press statement, Shriharsh Tendulkar, one of the astronomers who discovered the bursts said, “The host galaxy for this FRB appears to be a very humble and unassuming dwarf galaxy, which is less than 1 percent of the mass or our Milky Way Galaxy.That’s surprising. One would generally expect most FRBs to come from large galaxies which have the largest numbers of stars and neutron stars — remnants of massive stars." He added, “This dwarf galaxy has fewer stars, but is forming stars at a high rate, which may suggest that FRBs are linked to young neutron stars.” "There are also two other classes of extreme events — long duration gamma-ray bursts and superluminous supernovae — that frequently occur in dwarf galaxies, as well. This discovery may hint at links between FRBs and those two kinds of events."
Casey Law, an astronomer from University of Berkeley has also made a press statement. She is also the one who has created the software which analyses such rapid energy bursts. She said, "We really pushed hard to capture this terabyte-per-hour datastream reliably and set up a real-time platform for extracting these very faint fast bursts from that massive datastream.” Further, Shami Chatterjee, who is the team lead at Cornell University, said, “Finding the host galaxy of this FRB, and its distance, is a big step forward, but we still have much more to do before we fully understand what these things are.”
Space shocker Proof of life found in another galaxy after bursts of alien cosmic radio waves detected
Let me know when any signals are transmitted from outside our solar system that are clearly sent by intelligent beings; until then, pulsars, et cetera, are basically.....yawn....nothing dramatically new.The primary speculation is that these could be "giant pulses" from a very young pulsar. Very cool discovery!
FRBs: Mystery repeating radio signals discovered emanating from unknown cosmic source
Repeating radio signals coming from a mystery source far beyond the Milky Way have been discovered by scientists. While one-off fast radio bursts (FRBs) have been detected in the past, this is the first time multiple signals have been detected coming from the same place in space.
FRBs are radio signals from deep space that last for just a few milliseconds. Since their discovery over a decade ago, scientists have been searching for more to try to understand their origin. At present, there are several theories as to what they could be, with most involving some cataclysmic event like a supernova or a neutron star collapsing into a black hole.
All of the events seen so far appear to have been one-offs, with subsequent observations failing to find follow-up bursts coming from the same position as the original. However, an international team of researchers has now discovered an additional 10 bursts coming from the same direction as FRB 121102, using the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico.
