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An enigmatic source of radio flashes discovered

2022-06-09T08:42:30.328Z


Discovered 3 billion light years from Earth a new enigmatic source of Fast Radio Burst (Frb), probably just formed (ANSA)


A new enigmatic source of Fast Radio Burst (Frb) has been discovered 3 billion light years from Earth, probably just formed: it has been identified by the international group coordinated by LI Di, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, using the powerful Fast radio telescope in China with a diameter of 500 meters.

The study, published in the journal Nature, helps to better understand the origin of these mysterious electromagnetic pulses, first seen in 2007.



"Fast radio flashes or Frb are a phenomenon discovered very recently and for this reason still poorly understood", Maura Pilia, of the Astronomical Observatory of Cagliari of the National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) told ANSA.

"They are flashes of a few thousandths of a second, of very high energy and that are seen only in the radio band. We still know little about their origin," added the researcher.



The first to be discovered was identified with the initials FRB 010724: it was a single flash but its discovery was enough to open an entire field of study.

Over the years, the FRB archive has grown to include about 600 and among these, in 2012, the first (and so far only) to be repeated on a regular basis.

"This led to the hypothesis that they could be phenomena due to different causes - added Pilia - or that some flashes were due to cataclysmic phenomena such as the collision between two neutron stars, others to the interaction of a magnetar, a neutron star with a particularly intense magnetic field, with the remnants of its supernova ".



Now the Fast radio telescope has captured Frb at regular intervals arriving from a dwarf galaxy and with many characteristics similar to the first series of radio bursts observed 10 years ago.

"Probably - explained the researcher of the Astronomical Observatory of Cagliari - they are lightnings produced by a newly formed source and for this reason it emits so regularly over time".

A discovery that would seem to support the idea that the origin of these signals are in all cases the magnetars, whose activity is higher and more regular only in the initial phases and over the years they lose 'hits', with impulses much more spaced out over time. .

Source: ansa

All tech articles on 2022-06-09

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