Astronomers have detected another mysterious, powerful and recurring radio burst, which could bring them one step closer to uncovering the secrets behind this strange phenomenon.
Astronomers have discovered another mysterious, powerful and recurring radio burst, which could bring them one step closer to uncovering the secrets behind this strange phenomenon.
A new paper by an international consortium of astrophysicists, published in Nature this week, details the new discovery and describes how it mysteriously fires weaker signals between its large, repeating bursts, something scientists have only seen once before.
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What distinguishes fast radio bursts (FRBs) – unusual pulses of radio signals emitted from deep space that have puzzled astronomers for more than a decade – apart from other radio signals are their extreme strength and short length.
And this last mysterious radio explosion called FRB 190520B For the first time in 2019 by a team of astronomers using the Chinese Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) which is five hundred meters high.
Since then, the team has been trying to locate the source of the signal, as detailed in their new study, scientists have been able to trace the signal back to the vicinity of a dwarf galaxy about three billion light-years away.
While it seems that most FRBs The ones that have been discovered so far were one-off, and some of them are known to be repeated at regular intervals.
And what makes this FRB The latter, wonderfully different, is the fact that it also emits weaker radio waves between its big bursts.
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So far, only FRB The other specified the same – FRB 121102which was first discovered in 2012.
As the Caltech astronomer and study co-author said, Casey Law for ProfoundSpace.org : “The biggest surprise for me was the realization that FRB The new one appears to be a “perfect” twin of a previous find.
Scientists hope that the similarities – and differences – between these two discoveries of FRB helpful in discovering their causes, co-author Yu Wenfei with the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory told ProfoundSpace.org: “I am optimistic.. a mystery will be solved FRB By investigating such extreme radio bursts.”