Key Takeaways:
- Scientists recently identified several new fast radio bursts (FRBs), including the first location of a non-repeating burst.
- The cause of FRBs remains a mystery, with possibilities ranging from neutron stars to aliens.
- Researchers traced an FRB to a galaxy 8 billion light-years away, suggesting similar galaxies to ours might generate them.
- New radio telescope arrays will likely lead to many more FRB discoveries, helping us understand them better.
- Regardless of origin, these FRBs originated billions of years ago, offering a glimpse into the distant past.
Since 2007, astronomers have been finding very brief, powerful signals from across the cosmos in observations gathered by radio telescopes. The first location of a non-repeating signal was determined by researchers last week, and two days later, another team reported finding nine more. Although the origins of these so-called “fast radio bursts” are still unknown, scientists have recently improved their ability to identify them.
A team using CalTech’s Owens Valley Radio Observatory near Bishop, California, reported that it managed to capture a new, non-repeating signal dubbed FRB 190523 and trace it back to a galaxy nearly 8 billion light-years away.
A number of possible explanations for what causes FRBs have been proposed, ranging from powerful neutron stars to extraterrestrial intelligence.
Less than a week after an Australian team using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder announced it had also traced a non-repeating burst back to its source galaxy, some 4 billion light-years away, an accelerated article preview of the OVRO discovery was published online in the journal Nature.
As if that wasn’t enough FRB poppin’ off action for a single week, a Russian observatory also reported a batch of nine more FRBs, including a new repeater. Repeating FRBs are kind of a big deal because they’re rare and easier to trace to a source galaxy.
Even though there have been a lot of fast radio burst announcements in just one week, one of space science’s greatest mysteries is still the nature of FRBs. A little more information was provided by the CalTech team, who linked FRB 190523 to a galaxy that resembled our own Milky Way but was distinct from the dwarf galaxy that gave rise to the well-known first repeating burst, FRB 121102.
“This finding tells us that every galaxy, even a run-of-the-mill galaxy like our Milky Way, can generate a FRB,” says CalTech’s Vikram Ravi, lead author of the new paper in Nature, in a release.
Ravi adds that many more FRBs will be able to be detected and tracked by scientists thanks to upcoming radio telescope arrays like the Deep Synoptic Array, which is scheduled to open in 2021.
Even though there have been a lot of fast radio burst announcements in just one week, one of space science’s greatest mysteries is still the nature of FRBs. A little more information was provided by the CalTech team, who linked FRB 190523 to a galaxy that resembled our own Milky Way but was distinct from the dwarf galaxy that gave rise to the well-known first repeating burst, FRB 121102.
“This finding tells us that every galaxy, even a run-of-the-mill galaxy like our Milky Way, can generate a FRB,” says CalTech’s Vikram Ravi, lead author of the new paper in Nature, in a release.
Ravi also says radio telescope arrays like the Deep Synoptic Array will allow researchers to catch and trace many more FRBs.
“Astronomers have been chasing FRBs for a decade now, and we’re finally drawing a bead on them. … Now we have a chance of figuring out just what these exotic objects might be.”
Regardless of the origin, it’s important to keep in mind that the mysterious signals took billions of years to reach Earth, so if aliens are the explanation, these aliens are extremely old.
