In a first, scientists trace cosmic radio burst to tiny galaxy

Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, were first seen about 10 years ago.

In that interpretation, he said, fast radio bursts are like the tantrums of a toddler.

After nearly a decade since the first fast radio bursts (FRB) were discovered, an worldwide research team has observed the existence of a similar signal in a dwarf galaxy that is present in the constellation Auriga.

Dubbed Messaging Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (METI), the project aims to send conversation-starters via radio or laser signals to a rocky planet dubbed the “Second Earth”, which is circling Proxima Centauri.

Until now these elusive FRBs have never been traced to their origin and scientists have been left baffled by the odd signals.

As cosmic radio waves appear and then disappear in the night sky within a fraction of a second, they are extremely hard to sense and study.

Astronomers appreciate this breakthrough news, Cordes said.

“These radio flashes must have enormous amounts of energy to be visible from that distance”, said Shami Chatterjee from Cornell University, speaking at a press briefing at the American Astronomical Society meeting this week. “There are literally more theories for what FRBs are than there are detected examples of FRBs”, Chatterjee, tells Amina Khan at The Los Angeles Times.

Extremely bright exploding stars and long gamma ray bursts are also characteristic of this type of galaxy – and both of these are associated with massive, highly magnetised and rapidly rotating neutron stars called magnetas. Together they have localized FRB121102’s exact position within its host galaxy. Still more suggest that FRBs could be caused by cataclysms like a supernova or a collision of two stars. The radio signals of these stars are called pulsars, and on Earth we can see them repeat at a regular rate. This FRB was unique in that it kept repeating.

But where did it come from? They were able to catch FRB 121102 a total of nine times. But he saw nothing.

Another possibility is that it produces bursts very frequently, but most of these are too dim to detect.

The FRBs were last detected at the Green Bank Telescope in the USA and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, according to an article in the Astrophysical Journal. Then it got eight more.

“Honestly, we had forgotten that was about to be published.” said Dr. Chatterjee, who served as a co-author on that study. The trouble is that the burst doesn’t appear to follow the periodic pattern that you would expect for an object that regularly rotates.

“With the Gemini telescope, this optical blob looks like a faint, faint, faint galaxy – and this faint, fuzzy blob corresponds with, smack onto, the radio source”, Chatterjee said.

As a result, we now know the FRBs and their source are less than 100 light-years apart from one-another.

The discovery allows researchers to rule out some proposed explanations for FRBs. Researchers are now studying these emissions in an effort to identify their point of origin and better understand what they stand for.

There are now 18 known FRBs. Galactic nuclei have supermassive black holes at their centers, and those black holes spew jets of subatomic particles such as electrons, positrons (the antimatter siblings of electrons) and some atomic nuclei at near the speed of light.

“But if this were true, most astronomers would have expected a bright galaxy to be present, because large black holes are typically found only in large galaxies”.