A team of astronomers has discovered a new fast radio flash reaching Earth from a distant space every 157 days.
The FRB 121102 signal repeats for 90 days and then disappears for another 67. Astronomers observed it with the Lowell Telescope, a 76-meter radiotelescope at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in England for over 5 years. They described the results of their observations in a scientific article published in the scientific journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Although more than 100 high-speed radio flashes have been recorded since 2007, astronomers still do not know who or what emits them. Meanwhile, these are extremely interesting phenomena. By emitting such a signal, within a few milliseconds, the source releases the amount of energy that the Sun emits over 100 years. Most of the recorded fast radio flashes were one-off - after they once flashed toward us, they never repeated.
Less than a month ago, scientists recorded the strongest FRB signal so far, and in January the source of FRB 180916 distant from us was half a billion light years away, from which the signals reach Earth in a 16-day cycle.
What is the source of fast radio flashes ?
So far, the best explanation is that the source of flashes are magnetars, i.e. magnetic neutron stars that, by spinning, change the orientation of their axis of rotation (precession). Alternative theories speak of neutron stars orbiting other stars in binary systems.
The latest observations are extremely interesting for us, because so far it is the second system in which we see this kind of modulation of activity, says the main author of the study Kaustubh Rajwade from the University of Manchester. In my opinion, new results indicate that the explanation is not the precession of the neutron star.
Despite this, the FRB will remain a secret for now, because such revelations only confirm how little we still know about the origin of fast radio flashes. Much more must be discovered for scientists to have any chance of discovering the source of periodic flash sources.
A peculiar signal from space. It reaches Earth every 157 days
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