“In FRB world, this is certainly big news,” Sarah Burke-Spolaor, an astronomer at West Virginia University who studies FRBs and was not involved in the new detection, told me. This was the first time that the signal itself exhibited such a precise rhythm. Researchers had previously detected an FRB source that followed a discernible pattern, producing millisecond-long flickers for several days before quieting down and then starting back up again. Astronomers detected little pulses, peaking about every 0.2 seconds, within the three-second burst. And there was something unusual about the signal itself. But this emission of radio waves lasted about 1,000 times longer: three whole seconds. Most bursts last for just a few milliseconds, pulsing with such intensity that they shine as brightly as galaxies before vanishing. But astronomers still haven’t figured out whodunit, or how they don’t know for sure what kind of astrophysical objects produce these powerful emissions of radio waves.īut astronomers have found a new, tantalizing clue.Ī team of researchers has detected a new FRB from a galaxy several billion light-years from Earth, and this one is weirder than all the rest. Nearly all of them spring from distant galaxies, while just one so far arose from somewhere in our own Milky Way. Astronomers have gathered as much evidence as they can and have traced the approximate origins of FRBs in the enormous mansion that is our universe. A few “repeating FRBs” have shown up more than once.
Most are one-offs, never to be seen again. They come from all directions in the night sky and sneak up on our telescopes. The signals are intense and fleeting things. Scientists have discovered hundreds of such flashes, known as fast radio bursts (FRBs), over the past 15 years. Only, instead of a fictional killer, astronomers are trying to track down the source of strange flashes of radio signals that reach Earth from the depths of space. You can’t cover every corner, but with the right combination of strategy and luck, you can gather enough clues to make a reasonable guess at the tidy answer-who, where, and how-enclosed in a little yellow envelope at the center of it all. Scientists explore a sprawling but ultimately contained world, collecting pieces of information and testing out theories about a big mystery. Astronomy can be, in some ways, a bit like the classic board game Clue.
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