Fast radio bursts are brief and intense energy blasts that are brighter than galaxies.
Scientists are hot on the heels of unraveling the secrets of mysterious deep space signals, thanks to a peculiar discovery involving a repeating Fast Radio Burst (FRB). Imagine a flash of radio light, brighter than a billion suns and lasting just a millisecond. That's an FRB, and they typically come from beyond our Milky Way galaxy. Most are one-time events, but some "repeaters" fire out multiple bursts, leaving scientists scratching their heads about their origins.
A recent study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society has cracked open the mystery box a bit wider. They spotted a highly active repeating FRB behaving in a way that's completely unprecedented. This cosmic chatterbox is throwing out bursts with a strange "sliding whistle" effect, hinting at something new and exciting in the realm of deep space phenomena.
While the exact cause of FRBs remains a mystery, this new finding is a major step forward in understanding these enigmatic celestial objects. It's like finding a new word in an alien language, offering a tantalizing clue to a whole new conversation with the universe.
According to CNN, astronomers tried to determine whether there was a pattern within the timings between each burst, similar to some other known repeating fast radio bursts. But researchers weren't able to detect one for FRB 20220912A, further suggesting that celestial events can be unpredictable as well.
"This work is exciting because it provides both confirmation of known FRB properties and the discovery of some new ones," said lead study author Dr Sofia Sheikh, a National Science Foundation MPS-Ascend postdoctoral fellow at the SETI Institute, in a statement.
What are fast radio bursts?
According to Space.com, fast radio bursts (FRBs) are intense blasts of radio waves that can emit as much energy as the sun puts out in three days-but in just thousandths of a second. Much about these events remains mysterious.
FRBs come from all over the sky and have frequencies of around 1,400 hertz, though some have been detected with frequencies as low as 400 to 800 hertz. Some scientists estimate that 10,000 FRBs could occur at random points in the sky over Earth each day. However, most FRBs last just milliseconds, and by the time their energy has reached Earth, it is 1,000 times weaker than a mobile phone signal would be if it were emitted from the moon and detected on Earth. Because these signals are so weak and so brief, FRBs are incredibly difficult to spot.