It is not the first “fast radio burst” spotted by scientists, but it is the most surprising. For the first time, researchers have observed a repeating radio signal on a regular basis, thanks to a telescope in Canada, reports the english daily The Independent.
These “fast radio bursts”, or FRB for “Fast radio burst”, are not unusual. Since we began to detect them in 2007, more than sixty have been observed. It is a concentrated set of radio waves visible for just a few milliseconds. A millisecond flash emits the same amount of energy as the Sun in 10,000 years.
The repetition of one of these “fast radio bursts” is certainly atypical, but not new. During the summer of 2019, the same Canadian telescope named CHIME had detected one. It was the second such detection.
The novelty this time, and what challenges scientists, is the regularity of repetition, its predictability. The radio signal appears every hour and intensely for four days, before disappearing for twelve days. Then this sixteen-day cycle repeats. This regularity is “an important clue as to the nature of this object”, say the researchers, in a scientific article published on the ArXiv site.
Did you know that rapid radio bursts or FRBs generate in one millisecond as much energy as the Sun in ten thousand years? – A SIGNAL at 500 million light years has finally been identified! https://t.co/vbvOs2uXAC via @Youtube
– Amine Idriss Adoum (@amibiaka) January 14, 2020
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An origin still unknown
Scientists are struggling to establish the precise origin of this radio signal. One thing is certain: it does not come from our solar system. It would come from a massive galaxy, located more than 500 million light years from ours.
Astronomers also cannot explain the origin of FRB. Some have advanced the hypothesis of extraterrestrial messages, others think of a star disappearing in a black hole. But the repetition of these bursts makes such causes unlikely.
According to scientists, the predictability of repetition rather indicates that the object in question comes from a binary system, that is to say from a system organized around two stars similar to the Sun. Other objects in space have shown similar characteristics and are found in this type of system. It could for example revolve around a star, the signal would then be visible when the object faces the Earth.
This discovery remains very mysterious, but will allow scientists to learn more about “rapid radio bursts” and one day perhaps to explain this phenomenon.
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