Xinhua News Agency, Guiyang, January 18 (Reporter Qi Jian) As one of the top ten scientific discoveries of Nature in 2020, humans have observed a fast radio burst in the Milky Way for the first time.
Among them, there is the "Chinese Sky Eye".
Fast radio bursts are vividly called "flash lights" in the universe by scientists, and some astronomers even speculate that it is an "alien call".
This is because although it only lasts a few milliseconds, it can release the equivalent of tens of billions of years of power generation on the earth in such a short period of time with invisible radio waves.
To "see" rapid radio storms, it is necessary to use the "China Sky Eye."
The occurrence of fast radio bursts is related to magnetars.
The "China Sky Eye" helped scientists discover many new pulsars. Pulsars are a unique compact star, and there is a more unique type of pulsars called magnetars.
The magnetic field strength of a magnetar is one trillion times that of the Earth, and it can squeeze atoms into a pencil shape. It is a special celestial body with a known density second only to black holes. Humans have only observed dozens of them.
In 2020, two important achievements made by Chinese scientists using the "Sky Eye" observations were published in the authoritative scientific journal Nature.
One is the discovery of the polarization diversity of fast radio bursts, revealing that it originated from the magnetosphere of a compact celestial body, rather than shock waves, providing new clues for humans to understand its physical origin.
The second is to prove that the specific process of magnetars producing fast radio bursts is very special, and not all high-energy activities lead to fast radio bursts.
Chinese and foreign research teams jointly told a "story" of the origin of fast radio bursts through several "narratives" from different angles.
This is the first time that humans have observed a fast radio burst in the Milky Way, and magnetars have become the only celestial body capable of producing fast radio bursts that has been verified by observations.
Being selected as one of the top ten scientific discoveries in Nature in 2020, it illustrates the forward-looking nature of the research on rapid radio bursts.
Regarding the importance of the "Chinese Sky Eye", Li Kejia, a professor at Peking University and a researcher at the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, believes that the "Sky Eye" is extremely sensitive and can observe weak signals that other radio telescopes cannot detect. Due to the precise reflection surface of the engineering team Type control and 19-beam receiver's good polarization characteristics make it a powerful tool for studying fast radio bursts.