Credits: Image: Courtesy of CHIME Caption: A sky map of FRBs based on CHIME detections reveals bursts distributed evenly across the night sky. Credits: Image: Courtesy of CHIME
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To catch sight of a fast radio burst is to be extremely lucky in where and when you point your radio dish. Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are oddly bright flashes of light, registering in the radio band of the electromagnetic spectrum, that blaze for a few milliseconds before vanishing without a trace.
These brief and mysterious beacons have been spotted in various and distant parts of the universe, as well as in our own galaxy. Their origins are unknown, and their appearance is unpredictable. Since the first was discovered in 2007, radio astronomers have only caught sight of around 140 bursts in their scopes.
Scientists used the CHIME radio telescope in Canada to detect 535 mysterious fast radio bursts in space over the course of a year. These bursts could be used to map the universe.
And we still don t know where they come from. Stars from a distant nebula. Pitris / iStock
The best things in life are fleeting, and in radio astronomy, they are also among the brightest ever seen.
A telescope in British Columbia detected more than 500 new fast radio bursts in its first year of operation, between 2018 and 2019, according to a briefing streamed live via YouTube of an American Astronomical Society Meeting on Wednesday.
No one is sure what creates the fast radio bursts (FRBs), but this represents a significant step in continuing to map the universe.
The growing catalog of ultra-high-energy fast radio bursts