What are fast radio bursts? BIZARRE ‘heartbeat’-like signals detected billions of light years away
A recent discovery in space revealed an unexplained fast radio burst with a heartbeat-like pattern. Although the precise location and reason for the burst are unknown, astronomers believe the signal originated from a galaxy around a billion light-years away. Let us take a look at what radio bursts are.
A fast radio burst (FRB) is nothing but a transient radio pulse that lasts for a few hundredths of a millisecond or less and is brought on by an unidentified high-energy astronomical phenomenon. The typical FRB, according to astronomers, emits as much energy in a millisecond as the Sun does in three days.
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The first FRB, known as the Lorimer Burst, was founded in 2007 by Duncan Lorimer and his student David Narkevic. Since then, many FRBs have been documented, including a number that has been shown to repeatedly recur in erroneous ways.
Research done in the journal Nature has outlined proper conclusions for this study. We will further look into it.
Roughly 10% of the total FRBs in space have been seen to repeat and exhibit patterns. This is because the majority of them emit intense radio waves that last only a few milliseconds at most before entirely fading. Fast radio bursts are challenging to monitor because they occur so quickly and unexpectedly.
The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, or CHIME, is a radio telescope at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in British Columbia, Canada. CHIME, used since 2018, is one of the devices that is used to detect fast radio bursts. The work of this telescope is to scan the sky continuously and detect any quick radio bursts. CHIME can detect such bursts as it is sensitive to radio waves released by distant hydrogen in the cosmos.
A quick radio burst that was "peculiar in many ways" was discovered by astronomers using CHIME on December 21, 2019.
Daniele Michilli is a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. When the burst happened, Michilli was keeping an eye on the data as it was being received from CHIME. The signal is the most protracted rapid radio burst ever recorded. The FRB 20191221A signal, which was up to three seconds long, was around 1,000 times more persistent than ordinary fast radio bursts.
Michilli called the phenomenon "unusual." He said, "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. This is the first time the signal itself is periodic."
Michilli said in an email that while FRB 20191221A has not yet been repeated, the signal is formed by a "train of consecutive peaks that we found to be separated by 0.2 seconds."
According to Michilli, even the estimated distance of one billion light-years is very dubious because the study team is unsure of the precise galaxy from which the burst came. While CHIME is equipped to look for radio wave bursts, it is less effective at identifying their sources.
CHIME, on the other hand, is being enhanced through a project in which more telescopes will be watching simultaneously and will be able to pinpoint radio bursts to specific galaxies. The aforementioned telescopes are currently being built. But the signals do contain a few hints as to where they might originate from.
"CHIME has now detected many FRBs with different properties," Michilli said.
"We've seen some that live inside clouds that are very turbulent, while others look like they're in clean environments. "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," he added.
The signal from FRB 20191221A was compared to emissions from two distinct kinds: radio pulsars and magnetars, both of which are neutron stars. Radio pulsars are neutron stars that emit radio waves that seem to pulse as they revolve, whereas magnetars are neutron stars with extraordinarily strong magnetic fields. Both celestial bodies produce a signal that resembles a lighthouse's flashing beam. These emissions appear to be almost a million times fainter than the quick radio burst. Michilli stated that the researchers think this new signal could be a magnetar or pulsar "on steroids."
"This detection raises the question of what could cause this extreme signal that we've never seen before, and how we can use this signal to study the universe. Future telescopes promise to discover thousands of FRBs a month, and at that point, we may find many more of these periodic signals," Michilli concluded.
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Researchers will keep working with CHIME to scan the skies for more signs of this radio burst as well as other objects that emit a similar, periodic signal. Astronomers may be able to get more information about the rate of the universe's expansion by using the frequency of radio waves and their fluctuations.