Astronomers recorded a burst of radio waves 8 billion years old – study
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Astronomers have discovered an intense burst of radio waves that originates from the earliest known case of a fast radio pulse. It happened about 8 billion years ago.
This was reported by Reuters with reference to a study published in the scientific journal Science.
A fast radio pulse (FRB) is a pulse of radio frequency electromagnetic radiation. It lasts a fraction of a second, but it eclipses most other sources of radio waves in the universe.
“The radio waves in FRBs are similar to those used in microwave ovens. The amount of energy in FRBs is equivalent to a microwave oven heating a bowl of popcorn twice the size of the Sun,” – says co-leader of the study Ryan Shannon.
| Visualization of the path of a fast radio burst. Photo: M. Kornmesser/ESO |
In less than a millisecond, the recorded radio pulse released as much energy as our Sun emits in three decades.
It was discovered using a radio telescope located in Western Australia.
Prior to that, the oldest such pulse was dated 5 billion years ago.
According to scientists, the source of such radio pulses can be a magnetar – a neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field. Their mass is similar to the mass of the Sun, but the size is equal to a small city.
“There are higher-energy events in the universe involving exploding stars or black holes tearing stars apart. But FRBs are unique in that they produce all their energy in radio waves, with nothing visible in other bands — like optical light or X-rays – and that the signals are very short,” Shannon explains.
As the astronomer notes, more than 100,000 similar radio pulses occur every day in the universe. However, not all of them can be detected.
At the same time, only about 50 pulses were traced back to the galaxy where they originated.
“Galaxies in the distant Universe look different than those nearby. They don’t have good spiral arms, so it was unclear whether we were seeing one galaxy with several clusters or several smaller galaxies. It is likely that the source (of the fast radio pulse – ed.) there are several galaxies that may be merging,” – notes the scientist.
According to Shannon, studying these pulses can help detect and measure the amount of matter that fills the spaces between galaxies.
“Most of the ordinary matter in the universe – the ordinary matter that makes up stars, planets, people – is believed to be in the diffuse cosmic web of gas between galaxies.
People have searched for this matter for decades using other methods. Because it is so diffuse as to be almost invisible by other means, it was considered “extinct” – adds aside.
We will remind you that earlier we wrote that artificial intelligence discovered a supernova for the first time in the world without human help.
Also Read: 10 Weird Things That Happen During a Solar Eclipse
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