Jakarta – Mysterious radio wave emissions from outer space that took 8 billion years to reach Earth have been detected. Could the source be alien life?
Astronomers believe this finding is one of the farthest and most energetic beams of radio waves ever observed.
Fast radio beams (FRB) are very strong, millisecond-long radio waves of unknown origin.
The first FRB was discovered in 2007, and since then, hundreds of fast cosmic flashes have been detected coming from distant points in the universe.
The pulse, named FRB 20220610A, lasted less than a millisecond, but in that fraction of a second, it released energy equivalent to 30 years of solar energy emissions, according to a study published recently in the journal Science.
Many FRBs release super-bright radio pulses that only last a few milliseconds at most before disappearing, making fast radio bursts difficult to observe.
Radio telescopes help astronomers to track these fast cosmic flashes, including the ASKAP radio telescope in Wajarri Yamaji Country, Western Australia.
Astronomers used ASKAP to detect FRBs in June 2022 and determine where they came from.
“By using the ASKAP parabolic (radio) array, we were able to determine exactly where the burst came from,” said study co-author Stuart Ryder, an astronomer at Macquarie University in Australia, in a statement, citing CNN, Thursday (19/10).
“Then we used the (European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope) in Chile to search for the source galaxy, and found that it was older and more distant than any other FRB source discovered to date and was likely in a small cluster of merging galaxies.”
The research team tracked the emission of these waves in what appeared to be clusters of two or three galaxies that were in the process of merging, interacting and forming new stars.
This finding is in line with current theory that fast radio bursts could come from magnetars, or high-energy objects resulting from exploding stars.
Scientists believe fast radio emissions could be a unique method that can be used to “weigh” the universe by measuring matter between galaxies that is still unknown.
“If we count the amount of normal matter in the universe – the atoms that make us all up – we find that more than half that should be there is currently missing,” said study co-author Ryan Shannon, a professor at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia , in a statement.
Ryan Shannon estimates that the missing materials spread in very hot conditions.
“We suspect that the missing material is hiding in intergalactic space, but it is possible that the material is so hot and diffuse that it is impossible to see with normal techniques.”
So far, the results of the methods used to estimate the mass of the universe do not agree with each other.
“Fast radio beams detect this ionized material,” Shannon said. “Even in almost perfectly empty space, they can ‘see’ all the electrons, and that allows us to measure how much matter is present between the galaxies.”
This method of using fast radio beams to detect missing material was demonstrated by the late Australian astronomer, Jean-Pierre (JP) Macquart, in 2020.
“JP showed that the farther away the fast radio emission is, the more gas is dispersed between the galaxies. This is now known as the Macquart relationship,” Ryder said.
“Several recent fast radio bursts appear to break this connection. “Our measurement results confirm that the Macquart relation persists for more than half of the known universe.”
Nearly 50 fast radio beams have been traced to date to their point of origin, and about half have been discovered using ASKAP.
“While we still don’t know what causes these enormous bursts of energy, this paper confirms that bursts of fast radio waves are a common event in the universe.”
“And we will be able to use it to detect intergalactic matter, as well as better understand the structure of the universe,” Shannon said.
Astronomers hope future radio telescopes, currently under construction in South Africa and Australia, will enable the detection of thousands of fast radio emissions at greater distances.
“The fact that FRBs are so common is also very impressive,” Shannon said.
“This shows how promising this field is, because not only would you do this for 30 jets, you could do it for 30,000 jets, create a new map of the structure of the universe, and use it to answer big questions about cosmology,” he stressed.
2023-10-28 06:43:29
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