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
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Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, blaze for a few milliseconds before vanishing without a trace. Their origins are unknown, and their appearance is unpredictable. In the decade following their discovery in 2007, only 140 FRBs had been seen. Now, thanks to the launch of a large stationary telescope in the interior of British Columbia in 2018, the number of new FRBs detected has almost quadrupled – for a total of 535. Moreover, the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME/FRB), a McGill-led inter-university collaboration, has put together the first CHIME/FRB catalogue, which will be presented this week at the American Astronomical Society Meeting.
Astronomers have managed to detect very long-wavelength radio emission from a well-studied, repeating fast radio burst, called FRB 20180916B. What's more, the longer wavelengths arrive 3 days after the shorter-wavelength counterpart of the signal! Why?
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Scientists Come Up With More Credible Theories On Mysterious Fast Radio Burst
Two scientists groups have been tasked with the mission to uncover the mysteries of the fast radio bust discovered last year. Here are the details.
Scientists come up with more credible theories on the mysterious fast radio bust (Image Source: Astron)
In 2007, astronomers had discovered some mysterious signals, named fast radio burst (FRB), a phenomenon that they cannot yet explain. According to EarthSky, these bursts are short but strong. Although lasting .001 of a second long, the energy it radiates in that millisecond is stronger than what Sun puts out in three days. In April 2020, the fast radio burst repeated three times, once in January, following with July and then November. Currently, two scientist teams have been tasked with the mission to study the source of the FRB. Here is what has been discovered till now.