Mysterious, Thousands of Fast Radio Explosions Appear in Space

A research report published in the October 13, 2021 issue of the prestigious journal Nature reveals the discovery of 1,652 fast radio bursts (FRBs) in outer space. The find is the largest detected to date on record.

An international team of astronomers observed the findings using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in China. The mysterious phenomenon was dubbed FRB 121102 and represented more FRBs in a single event than all previously reported events combined.

The study involved more than 30 co-authors from 16 institutions in four countries and is part of a long-term collaboration between institutions. In addition to the University of Nevada and the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC), Guizhou Normal University, Cornell University, Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, West Virginia University, CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science, University of California Berkeley, and Nanjing University .

It is known that more than a decade after the discovery of the FRB, astronomers are still confused about the origin of the millisecond-long cosmic explosion. Each of these explosions produces energy equivalent to the sun’s energy in a year.

Researchers reported that these 1,652 FRBs were independent of a single source for 47 days in 2019. The bursts were measured with FAST in a total of 59.5 hours over 47 days from August 29 to October 29, 2019.

“This is the first time a single source of FRB has been studied in such detail,” said Bing Zhang, an astrophysicist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in the UNLV release.

Zhang said the set of massive explosions helped researchers pinpoint the source. Unlike previous explosions, which differ in their energy characteristics and energy distribution.

Since FRBs were first discovered in 2007, astronomers around the world have turned to powerful radio telescopes like FAST to track bursts and look for clues to where they came from and how they were generated. The source that drives most FRBs is widely believed to be a magnetar, a neutron star the size of a very dense city and one of the most powerful magnetic fields in the universe. And while scientists are gaining greater clarity on what produces FRBs, the exact location where they occur remains a mystery.

According to Zhang, there are two active models from which FRB originates. One of them could be because they originate from the magnetosphere, or in the strong magnetic field of a magnetar. Another theory is that FRBs formed from relativistic shocks outside the magnetosphere traveling at the speed of light.

“This result poses a major challenge for the latter model. The explosions are too frequent and—given that this episode alone accounts for 3.8 percent of the available energy of the magnetar—it adds too much energy for the second model to work,” Zhang said.

From observations made by astronomers, it is known that, during its most active phase, FRB 121102 includes 122 explosions measured in a one-hour period. “The highest recurrence rate ever observed for any FRB,” said Pei Wang, co-lead author of the article from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The researchers hope that FAST will continue to systematically investigate a large number of recurrent FRBs in the future. “As the largest antenna in the world, the sensitivity of FAST has proven conducive to revealing the intricacies of cosmic transients, including FRBs,” said Di Li, lead author of the study from NAOC.

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