Mysterious Cosmic Radio Bursts Found To Repeat

[SIZE=12.544px]"Astronomers for the first time have detected repeating short bursts of radio waves from an enigmatic source that is likely located well beyond the edge of our Milky Way galaxy. The findings indicate that these "fast radio bursts" come from an extremely powerful object which occasionally produces multiple bursts in under a minute.[/SIZE]


Prior to this discovery, reported in Nature, all previously detected fast radio bursts (FRBs) have appeared to be one-off events. Because of that, most theories about the origin of these mysterious pulses have involved cataclysmic incidents that destroy their source - a star exploding in a supernova, for example, or a neutron star collapsing into a black hole. The new finding, however, shows that at least some FRBs have other origins.

FRBs, which last just a few thousandths of a second, have puzzled scientists since they were first reported nearly a decade ago. Despite extensive follow-up efforts, astronomers until now have searched in vain for repeat bursts.

That changed last November 5th, when McGill University PhD student Paul Scholz was sifting through results from observations performed with the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico - the world's largest radio telescope. The new data, gathered in May and June and run through a supercomputer at the McGill High Performance Computing Centre, showed several bursts with properties consistent with those of an FRB detected in 2012.

The repeat signals were surprising - and "very exciting," Scholz says. "I knew immediately that the discovery would be extremely important in the study of FRBs." As his office mates gathered around his computer screen, Scholz pored over the remaining output from specialized software used to search for pulsars and radio bursts. He found that there were a total of 10 new bursts.

The finding suggests that these bursts must have come from a very exotic object, such as a rotating neutron star having unprecedented power that enables the emission of extremely bright pulses, the researchers say. It is also possible that the finding represents the first discovery of a sub-class of the cosmic fast-radio-burst population.
"Not only did these bursts repeat, but their brightness and spectra also differ from those of other FRBs," notes Laura Spitler, first author of the new paper and a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany."


http://phys.org/news/2016-03-mysterious-cosmic-radio.html

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature17168.html

 

Interesting for sure.......

All kinds of signals in space..... SPACE GOES ON FOREVER I believe!!

 

Yes, this is interesting......

 

I was wondering where I left that transmitter... I'm not going back for it now.

 

Ah man!!