![]() ![]() The specific astrophysical event that causes FRBs is still unknown, although all observed FRBs are from galaxies outside our own. "The discovery of a 16.35-day periodicity in a repeating FRB source is an important clue to the nature of this object." The repeating FRB has been dubbed FRB 180916.J0158+65. "We conclude that this is the first detected periodicity of any kind in an FRB source," the researchers said in the paper. Hence, the new discovery of a fast radio burst that repeats once every 16 days is a major clue, and marks the first time scientists have documented a predictable pattern among these mysterious repeating signals that are originating deep in space. Fast radio bursts are hard to study because of how brief they are, meaning telescopes can't often focus on them in time to get a good look. It's a new piece in the puzzle of fast radio bursts (FRBs) - short bursts of radio waves that are so powerful that scientists are able to detect them on Earth, despite their extragalactic origins. It's not the first false alarm for scientists who search for extraterrestrial intelligence.Nearly 500 million light years away, a mysterious radio signal is repeating itself. Sometimes space mysteries are explained sometimes they go on "I did not ever think the signal would cause such excitement," he said. Smith said he was excited but also skeptical, thinking there was a simple explanation. ![]() "But after a while I started thinking, this is exactly the kind of signal we're looking for." "My first thought was that it must be interference," he told Nature. Smith, who was working as a research intern with Breakthrough Listen, told his supervisor, University of California, Berkeley, astronomer Danny Price, who posted it to the Breakthrough Listen Slack channel. That's when Shane Smith, an undergraduate at Hillsdale College in Michigan, discovered the signal while sifting through data collected from Parkes. ![]() But it went unnoticed until the following year. The 2019 signal was detected by the radio telescope as it spent 26 hours listening in the region of Proxima Centauri. The Two-Way In A Far-Off Galaxy, A Clue To What's Causing Strange Bursts Of Radio Waves "That's something that you expect from things that are actually in space," he says, because the Earth's spin causes a Doppler shift in the frequency. However, the signal didn't stay at the same frequency - it drifted, Wright says. That alone is not surprising, he says, because there are lots of easily identifiable human-made signals that need to be sifted out all the time. It was at one specific frequency, whereas natural signals always show up over a range of frequencies. It had clear signs of being produced by technology, he says. I mean, it's the first time in years that they've seen something like this," Wright says. "This signal mimicked exactly what it is they were trying to find. But the researchers eliminated that possibility - there were no aircraft in the area. The signal, which lasted about five hours at 982 megahertz, was at a frequency normally reserved for aircraft communications. ![]() "This was a really pernicious signal," Jason Wright, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics who is director of the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center, tells NPR. How the search shifted from the stars back to Earth ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |