A team of Canadian astronomers has discovered that a mysterious radio source from the outskirts of another galaxy has been sending radio signals to Earth in constant 16-day cycles. Nothing like this has been seen before. It is the first time that these radio bursts from another galaxy about 500 million light years away from the earth, repeat a constant cycle, since they are usually sporadic . Some occasional fast radio bursts occur in groups and repeat irregularly, but those with a regular and repeatable occurrence are rare.
No, they are probably not aliens
Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are short bursts of radio emissions lasting a few milliseconds that can be detected by devices listening to signals from outer space, as they generate as much energy in a millisecond blast as the Sun does in decades. And although they are probably not aliens – I’m sure many are wondering – the observations could help shed light on this mysterious phenomenon. Whatever it is, it must be incredibly powerful.
Since the first such signal was discovered in 2007 by astrophysicist Duncan Lorimer and his student David Narkevic (Lorimer Burst), many more have been discovered, but their origin remains unclear. What we do know is that the source is extragalactic.
Astronomers discovered the first cycle of these signals by observing the one known as FRB 180916.J0158 + 65 , originally identified in 2018, but with further follow-up in 2019. The most recent observations (with data from CHIME, Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) recorded 28 bursts between September 16, 2018 and October 30, 2019.
500 million light years away
The event appears to come from a spiral galaxy less than 500 million light-years from Earth in an active star-forming region, making it the closest fast radio burst discovered to date. The CHIME data showed explosions roughly every hour over the course of four days, before going silent for 12 days. Then the same pattern of activity was repeated again, creating a persistent cycle of 16.35 days.
Since astrophysicists still don’t know what creates these FRBs, identifying their source is a key part of understanding them.
What creates these FRBs?
” We conclude that this is the first detected periodicity of any kind in an FRB source ,” the researchers write in their paper. “The discovery of a 16.35-day periodicity in a repeating FRB source is an important clue to the nature of this object.”
There are many theories but they are all born from speculation. Some astrophysicists think that FRBs may be connected to gamma ray bursts (GRBs); Another possibility is magnetars, a type of neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field; Non-scientific personnel believe that these signals could come from an alien technological civilization. The truth is that, for the moment, the origin of these fast radio bursts remains a mystery.
Referencia: Periodic activity from a fast radio burst source, arXiv:2001.10275 [astro-ph.HE] arxiv.org/abs/2001.10275
