Repeating fast radio bursts(FRBs)
Out in the depths of space, there are radio signals that astronomers don't understand. Now a Canadian research team has found a repeating signal, only the second of its kind to be discovered.In a new paper published Wednesday in Nature, researchers reveal that a recently unveiled radio telescope in British Columbia the "Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment" (CHIME) captured 13 more FRBs, but more importantly, it caught a second repeating FRB.
So we have spotted more than a dozen new pulses of radio waves coming from outside our galaxy, including a few bursts that stem from the exact same location in the sky. It’s only the second time we’ve found these weird intergalactic flashes, known as fast radio bursts that repeatedly come from one spot in space. This discovery brings us one step closer to figuring out where these weird pulses come from.
The origin of fast radio bursts (FRBs), millisecond-long pulses of radio waves, is unknown, but most astronomers say they are generated by powerful astrophysical phenomena emanating from billions of light years outside our galaxy.
The new detection came from a region of space some 1.5 billion light-years away,and all 13 new bursts have the lowest radio frequency yet detected, but they were also brighter than any previously seen. We believe that all 13 bursts likely originated from dense, turbulent regions inside of their host galaxies, particularly areas with a lot of violent activity, such as near dense supernova remnants or close to black holes.
Astronomers’ theories for what causes FRBs are almost as numerous as known FRBs themselves. At one point, astronomers even considered the bizarre idea that FRBs could be signals from intelligent aliens but Science isn’t a matter of belief, it’s a matter of evidence. Deciding what’s likely ahead of time limits the possibilities. It’s worth putting ideas out there and letting the data be the judge.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0864-x
Phedias Hadjicharalambous.
Cyprus Astronomy Organisation
