Mysterious radio bursts traced to ancient galaxy

Astronomers have been studying a phenomenon known as Fast Radio Bursts for decades, which are transient astrophysical radio pulses lasting only milliseconds. Researchers have now uncovered part of their source, as reported in the Washington Post. Scientists speculated that FRBs occur thousands of times a day, never repeating. This most recent discovery revealed that only 16 had ever been pinpointed. Randomly spread out over the sky, researchers have been perplexed over their occurrence.

A recent observation captured one of the mysterious flashes at Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization‘s (CSIRO)  64-m Parkes radio telescope in Australia. On April 18, a burst was detected and traced to an elliptical galaxy roughly 6 billion light years away, now designated as FRB 150418. Lead author Evan Keane and colleagues made the discovery. “In the past FRBs have been found by sifting through data months or even years later,” Keane, an astronomer with the Square Kilometer Array Organization, said in a statement. “By that time it is too late to do follow up observations.”

Following the discovery, scientists have established a signal response system. If the Parks radio telescope observes the pulses, a ping on the telescope sends out an email blast. “I was awoken by my phone going crazy a few seconds after it happened, saying: Evan, wake up! There was an FRB!” Keane reported to the BBC. After which, the team utilized the Australia Telescope Compact Array, allowing them to capture the FRB’s afterglow. Another telescope, the Subaru telescope located in Hawaii, was employed to locate the far-off galaxy. Once scientists established where the galaxy was, they used the light source to calculate its distance.

The cause of FRBs is still unknown, but the recent observations provide clues. Elliptical galaxies are ancient, according to Slate’s Phil Plait, meaning that’s in unlikely a massive supernova caused this certain FRB, since these types of stars fade out within galaxies this old. Because of the galaxy’s ancient past, scientists believe that a pair of colliding neutron stars could be causing the radio pulses. Scientists even hypothesize that FRBs could materialize from a number of sources.