Capturing radio waves from a galaxy far, far away
Astronomers have discovered an extremely powerful stream of radio waves coming from a very distant galaxy, which took eight billion years to reach Earth, a discovery that would help uncover the mystery of this cosmic phenomenon, according to a recently published study.
This “fast radio burst,” a flash of electromagnetic waves lasting less than a millisecond, finally reached Earth on June 10, 2022, and an Australian telescope was able to pick up its signal.
It turned out that this flow came from a galaxy much farther away than the one that was the source of previously recorded fast radio bursts, as it crossed eight billion light-years, a time when the universe was less than half its current age, according to what astronomers revealed in the magazine “Science.” .
Since such signals were first discovered in 2007, scientists have wondered about the exact origin of this cosmic phenomenon, which is difficult to determine because it is hidden.
Because these signals are sometimes repeated, some initially assumed that they were radio communications transmitted through space and originating from aliens.
In a more serious hypothesis, scientists suggest that the origin of these flows is a very dense dead star called a magnetar, which has an extremely strong magnetic field.
Study co-author Ryan Shannon from Swinburne University in Melbourne said that the ability of the ASKAP telescope in Western Australia to detect these fast radio bursts is “amazing.”
The astrophysicist added, “We were lucky because we were able to observe this small point in the sky for a fraction of a thousandth of a second, after the flow had passed eight billion years to be observed.”
This new radio flux far exceeded the previous record for a similar flux that took five billion light-years to reach Earth. The new flow was so powerful that, in less than a thousandth of a second, it released as much energy as the sun emits in 30 years.
