a Recent study This publication in Nature Astronomy examines the discovery of what astronomers call “ultrafast radio bursts,” a new type of fast radio bursts (FRBs) that the team determined last for ten millionths of a second or less.
Traditionally, fast radio bursts have been found to last only milliseconds, but this study is based on a Study 2021 Which assumed that fast radio bursts could last for millionths of a second.
This also comes after astronomers Recently announced Discovery of the oldest and most distant FRB ever observed, about 8 billion light-years from Earth.
“During our group meetings, we talked a lot about it.” Mark Snelders saidHe is a Ph.D. Candidate in Astron and the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands), along with being the lead author of the latest study and co-author of the 2021 study.
“By chance, I discovered that there was a public dataset that we could use for this purpose.”
border-frame=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; write to clipboard; encrypted media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-sharing”allowfullscreen>
For the study, the team was able to obtain five hours of data on a known FRB flow FRB 20121102Awhich was discovered in November 2012 and is located about three billion light-years from Earth, along with being the first known recurring FRB, according to Study 2022.
Data were obtained from Breakthrough listening The project, which is a global scientific collaboration aiming to find evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, and the data comes specifically from Green Bank’s Breakthrough Listening segment of Open the data archive.
When acquiring the data, the team took the first 30 minutes and divided each second into 500,000 separate images, then combined machine learning and software filters to isolate outliers within the data to identify eight ultra-fast radio bursts lasting a mere ten millionths of a second. or less. For context, ten millionths of a second is equivalent to 0.0000001 seconds.
“In detecting and characterizing these microsecond-period radio bursts, we have shown that there is a population of ultrafast radio bursts that are missed by current large-scale FRB searches due to insufficient temporal resolution,” the researchers noted. “These results suggest that fast radio bursts occur more frequently” More frequent and more diverse than initially thought. This can also affect our understanding of energy, waiting time, and burst rate distributions. “
border-frame=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; write to clipboard; encrypted media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-sharing”allowfullscreen>
While questions remain about how these ultrafast radio bursts are produced, the team expects to identify more ultrafast radio bursts in the future. However, the difficulty is in finding data files that can be split into 500,000 separate images per second, as some files lack the specifications needed to make this splitting possible.
The team’s long-term goal is to use FRB data to map the space between stars and galaxies, which they hope will help them gain better insights into the interactions between galaxies and gas in the surrounding environment.
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are some of the most mysterious celestial phenomena ever studied. Discovered for the first time In 2007, astronomers made amazing strides in understanding their possible origins and how many fast radio bursts exist in the universe. This includes the discovery that most fast radio bursts come from outside our Milky Way Galaxy.
However, in 2020, astronomers discovered One source of FRBs It was from a magnetar within our Milky Way Galaxy. Also, while FRB 20121102A is classified as the first known recurring FRB, a 2023 study was conducted Identified 25 regularly recurring FRBs They were found using the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME), which is located in British Columbia, Canada, and has found more than 1,000 FRBs to date.
What new discoveries about ultrafast radio bursts will astronomers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, that’s why we’re studying!
This article was originally published by The universe today. Read the Original article.
“Devoted student. Bacon advocate. Beer scholar. Troublemaker. Falls down a lot. Typical coffee enthusiast.”