Latest fast radio burst adds to mystery of their source
May 12, 2017 by Bob Yirka report
(Phys.org)—An international team of space researchers has reported on the detection of a new fast radio burst (FRB) and their efforts to trace its source. They have written a paper describing the detection and search for evidence, and have uploaded it to the arXiv preprint server.
FRBs are a relatively new development for space scientists—they are extremely short blasts of strong radio waves that come from space, but scientists have not been able to explain what makes them. In this new detection, the FRB, now named FRB 150215, was first detected by researchers working with the Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia. What made the detection of FRB 150215 unique was that several teams were prepared to train their telescopes on the FRB origin point shortly after it was detected. Unfortunately, none of them were able to detect anything that might identify its cause, or even exactly where it occurred. exactly. Additionally, after analyzing data from the follow-up telescopes, the researchers found that the FRB had taken an interesting path through the Milky Way to make its way to us—a hole of sorts that, prior to the detection of the FRB, was unknown. Thus, despite learning nothing new about the source of FRBs in general, the team has learned something new about our galaxy.
Read more at:
https://phys.org/news/2017-05-latest-fast-radio-mystery-source.html#jCp
