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15
JIUGUANG WANG VIA FLICKR, CC BY-SA 2.0
Pinpointing a
Fast Radio Burst
❯
ASTRONOMERS ARE FINALLY starting to
figure out fast radio bursts (FRBs). The
milliseconds-long surges of radiation are rare
and sudden — even 10 years after their discovery, we
know almost nothing about them. But in January,
astronomers announced they’d spotted a repeating
FRB and pinpointed its location to a small dwarf
galaxy 2.5 billion light-years away. That’s a first for
astronomy. The findings appeared in Nature and
The Astrophysical Journal.
Researchers observed a whopping nine bursts
from the same source, dubbed FRB 121102, allowing
them to home in on its location. Another team of
researchers announced in August they’d detected an
additional 14 bursts, and at higher radio frequencies
than ever observed before. “The FRB was extremely
generous to us,” said study co-author Casey Law of
the University of California, Berkeley, during the
announcement. Astronomers also discovered weak,
long-lasting radio emissions coming from within
130 light-years of FRB 121102, suggesting the two
are related — though we don’t know how, if at all.
While the finding confirmed long-standing
suspicions that FRBs originated from outside our
galaxy, many questions remain, including if any
others repeat, and what causes them. Potential origins
include highly magnetic neutron stars — the collapsed
cores of dead stars — and unusual black holes. “New
mysteries in astronomy are somewhat rare,” said
co-author Sarah Burke-Spolaor of Western Virginia
University, so astronomers are relishing the chase.
BILL ANDREWS
The Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and
other radio observatories saw the signal bursts.