- Scientists have encountered a mysterious space object
- It sends out very unusual signals
American astronomers from the NASA agency managed to capture a mysterious, repeating signal from space. However, its origin is a mystery to them.
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Scientists intercepted a message from space!
As many as 35 new so-called repeating fast radio flashes have recently been detected by astronomers. The observation could explain one of the biggest mysteries they’ve been dealing with for a long time.
The signal marked with the number 20220912A belongs to the so-called fast radio bursts (FRB). These are nothing new for astronomers, they have repeatedly managed to catch them in previous years. However, they recorded 35 odd pulses in this signal.
It was first discovered by scientist Sofia Sheikh of the SETI Institute, who observed it using the Allen Telescope Array in California. Together with her team, she discovered a total of 35 flashes with an average duration of 1.2 milliseconds.
“These mysterious signals show a downward frequency drift, a relationship between the signal bandwidth and the central frequency, and a change in the duration of the flashes over time,” says the New Scientist article. The experts also found something never before: during the observation, there was a noticeable drop in the center frequency of the signals. The researchers described the effect as a “sad trombone”.
“The sad trombone effect is a flash-by-flash effect – you’ll see it if you take a single flash in detail. But then the frequency also seems to drop in these bursts,” says Wael Farah, who is also at the SETI Institute and part of the science team. “It’s like a long sad trombone effect.”
The signal is coming from an alien galaxy
It is not clear what might be causing the effect, especially since the cause of FRBs in general remains controversial. One of the main explanations is that these flashes come from magnetars, which are rotating, strongly magnetized neutron stars – this could eventually match the signals from FRB 20220912A, but no existing model can explain all the features observed so far.
Fast radio flashes have been observed by astronomers several times, but repeated ones are very rare. These are very short flashes in the radio wave spectrum, usually only a few milliseconds long.
The flares have the energy of about 500 million suns and come from different galaxies. So far, scientists are only speculating about the origin, but it turned out that the signals come from different environments, not just from those with extreme gravity, as they originally thought.
Preview photo source: Chalmers University of Technology, source: New Scientist
2023-12-30 12:31:35
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