- Astronomy: The mystery of extragalactic radio bursts grows
A group of astronomers from the University of Cornwell in collaboration with the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Cartography Experiment (CHIME) has discovered a powerful burst of radio (FRB) from another galaxy that is repeated regularly every 16 days. An unusual fact since one of the characteristics that define these mysterious signs of space is that they are unpredictable . That is, they follow no pattern, which makes them incredibly difficult to study.
As explained by the journal Science Alert , where the discovery has been published, for the first time astronomers have found a burst of rapid radio (FRB) that is repeated in a regular cycle, which follows a pattern. Every 16.35 days, the signal called FRB 180916.J0158 + 65 follows a similar pattern . For four days he spits a gust or two every hour, then he stops for 12 days, and the same pattern is repeated again.
"The discovery of a periodicity of 16.35 days in a source of repeated FRB is an important clue to the nature of this object," the researchers wrote in their article.
The 16.35 day period could be the orbital period , with the FRB object only facing the Earth during a certain part of the orbit.
FRB 180916.J0158 + 65 is one of the few FRBs that date back to a galaxy. It is on the outskirts of a spiral galaxy 500 million light years away, in a region of star formation. This means that a supermassive black hole is unlikely , but a stellar black hole is possible.
Nor can it be ruled out that the source of FRB is a single and solitary object, although the researchers point out that this explanation is a bit more difficult to relate to the data.
The next step would be, of course, to continue looking at FRB 180916.J0158 + 65 . But it would also be quite interesting to try to see if periodicity can also be detected in other bursts.
First seen in 2007, FRBs are one of the most intriguing mysteries of astrophysics . They appear all over the sky, and astronomers are not sure what causes them.
In summary, FRBs are enormously energetic radiation flashes in the radio spectrum that last only a few milliseconds at most. In that period of time, they can discharge as much energy as hundreds of millions of suns.
Most of them explode once and are never detected again . This makes it quite difficult to track these bursts to the galaxy where they come from. Some FRB spit repeated radio flares, but unpredictably. These are easier to track a galaxy, but so far, that hasn't brought us much closer to an explanation.
Of the more than 60 FRBs observed to date, only one source repetitions had been found once, a discovery made by the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico in 2015, now there are two.
Astronomers observed this cycle for a total of 409 days. They don't know what it means, but they think it could be another piece of the complicated FRB puzzle
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