The rapid burst of radio that doesn't fit

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Since its discovery a decade ago, rapid radio bursts (FRB) have brought astronomers from all over the world headlong. And just now, when they thought they were beginning to understand them, they have detected a new one - the one closest to Earth - that calls into question everything I knew about them.

Rapid radio bursts - one of the greatest mysteries of the universe - are luminous flashes that last milliseconds and that arise from different points of the cosmos.

Since the first of them was detected, astronomers have observed hundreds of these objects, but only the precise location of four of them is known : one, FRB 121102, is repeated periodically, and the other three were seen only once.

In addition, of the four located, the one that is repeated is in a very small galaxy that produces stars and the other three arose from completely different galaxies, from "very large" galaxies.

From there, astronomers established that FRBs could be divided between those that repeat and arise from small galaxies, and those that do not repeat and come from large galaxies. Until now.

And last year, the Canadian CHIME telescope detected a new explosion (FRB 180916.J0158 + 65) whose location was not clear and was later studied by a team of astronomers led by the Cantabrian astrophysicist Benito Marcote, researcher at The Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC (JIVE) of the Netherlands.

Four beams

On June 19, combining eight radio telescopes of the European VLBI network, Marcote and his team studied the area where the explosion had been seen and thanks to the resolution of the telescopes - it would allow to distinguish a person walking on the Moon- They detected four beams of light.

Once the location of the bursts was known, the same team used one of the largest telescopes in the world, the Gemini eight-meter telescope, in Mauna Kea (Hawaii) and determined that the bursts came from a spiral galaxy located about 500 million of light years and with a remarkable star formation, a finding that is described this Monday in Nature .

A different FRB

This FRB does not fit "with anything" of what they had established so far. "It is completely different from the only recurring FRB that had been located but also from those that are not," explains Benito Marcote.

The differences between them are no longer so clear, so they began to think that these objects "are not linked to any specific type of galaxy or concrete environment, but it is possible that FRBs occur anywhere in the universe and that only certain conditions are required to see them, "says the Spanish researcher.

The finding, however, has something in its favor: it is the closest to Earth (500 million light years), compared to the 5,000 million light years of another FRB recurrent e, "which will allow a level of observation without precedents ".

The other outbreaks, which we have only seen once, are estimated to have arisen from points in the universe located about 50,000 or even 100,000 million light years, which suggests that it is possible that they are repeated but that their signal is so weak that We have only seen them once, Marcote acknowledges.

"We hope that continuing studies will reveal the conditions that allow the existence of these mysterious outbursts. Our goal remains to locate more precisely FRB to understand their origin in detail," concludes Jason Hessels, of the Dutch astronomy radio institute Astron and the University of Amsterdam .

And, although the outbreaks remain a mystery, their study can contribute ideas about the Universe itself and about very different areas of astronomy.

"As we continue to unravel the mystery of the FRBs, astronomers need to be able to study these objects in incredible detail. The sensitivity of EVN radio telescopes is a unique opportunity to observe these events, and advance the understanding of these enigmatic objects. "concludes the director of the Joint InsJtute for VLBI ERIC, Francisco Colomer.

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