The FRB was first spotted in 2019 using the FAST telescope in China's Guizhou province, the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, which possesses a signal-receiving area equal to 30 football fields. This galaxy's collective star mass is roughly one-2,500th that of our Milky Way. A light year is the distance light travels in a year - 9.5 trillion km. Researchers on Wednesday said they have detected a fast radio burst, or FRB, originating from a dwarf galaxy located nearly three billion light-years from Earth. These might include: a neutron star, the compact collapsed core of a massive star that exploded as a supernova at the end of its life cycle a magnetar, a type of neutron star with an ultra-strong magnetic field and a black hole messily eating a neighbouring star. Radio waves have the longest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum.Īstronomers suspect that these bursts may be unleashed by certain extreme objects. Since being discovered in 2007, astronomers have struggled to understand what causes phenomena called fast radio bursts involving pulses of radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation originating from places inside our Milky Way and other galaxies. "For instance, the frequency of the bursts, and how they change as the source moves away from Earth, could be used to measure the rate at which the universe is expanding," the press release reads.Powerful bursts of radio waves emanating from a distant dwarf galaxy that were detected using a massive telescope in China are moving scientists closer to solving what one called a "cosmic mystery" that has lingered for years. More periodic signals from this source could be used as an astrophysical clock. "Future telescopes promise to discover thousands of FRBs a month, and at that point we may find many more of these periodic signals." "This detection raises the question of what could cause this extreme signal that we've never seen before, and how can we use this signal to study the universe," said Michilli. The detection could help them as they study the universe and neutron stars. They hope to catch more bursts from FRB 20191221A. From the properties of this new signal, we can say that around this source, there's a cloud of plasma that must be extremely turbulent." "We've seen some that live inside clouds that are very turbulent, while others look like they're in clean environments. "CHIME has now detected many FRBs with different properties," said Michilli. These are dense, rapidly spinning collapsed cores of giant stars. The source of the new FRB remains a mystery, but scientists think it could emanate from a radio pulsar or magnetar, which are neutron stars. It is currently the longest-lasting FRB with the clearest periodic pattern detected to date. Researchers from MIT and McGill University in Canada, who published a study on the signal, have named it FRB 20191221A. The signal came from a distant galaxy, several billion light-years from Earth. Photo courtesy of CHIME, with background edited by MIT News Pictured is the large radio telescope CHIME that picked up the FRB. Named FRB 20191221A, this fast radio burst, or FRB, is currently the longest-lasting FRB, with the clearest periodic pattern, detected to date. This is the first time the signal itself is periodic." Astronomers detected a persistent radio signal from a far-off galaxy that appears to flash with surprising regularity. "Not only was it very long, lasting about three seconds, but there were periodic peaks that were remarkably precise, emitting every fraction of a second - boom, boom, boom - like a heartbeat. "It was unusual," said Daniele Michilli, a postdoc in MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.
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