Astronomers have discovered a recurring fast radio burst - possibly from different types of sources

Arecibo radio observatory equipment

Paul Scholz [Paul Scholz] from the Max Planck Institute, with colleagues by radio astronomers in the study of one of the fastest radio pulses (BR) found repeatable pulses emanating from one particular source. This discovery once threw several theories of origin BR, adding even more puzzles scientists.

Fast radio pulses, single pulses of a few milliseconds long, radio astronomers first detected in 2007. The group of Professor Duncan Lorimer, in search of pulsars spent processing signals the results of observations of six years ago the Australian 64-meter radio telescope Parkes.

The signal was a single, powerful, but very short. His test took about five years. Since then, several of the signals were registered, and now scientists are convinced that they can not be attributed to interference, equipment malfunction or microwave, where the staff prepares food. With a very high probability signals emanate from deep space.

Explain the origin was suggested a few: the merger of neutron stars, the last gasp of the evaporated due to Hawking radiation of black holes, blitzar turning into a black hole, etc. But all these explanations have been thought up to that moment, as the researchers found that these signals are periodic.

During 2015 Laura Spitler [Laura Spitler] and his colleagues recorded ten similar signals emanating from one point FRB 121102. This object has already been registered as a source of BR, and astronomers decided to check it again, just in case. The results of these measurements and studied Scholz to find in them a repeating signal.

Interestingly, the six signals came from this source for several minutes, and distributed to the rest of the week. These observations rule out sporadic catastrophic events such as the collision of neutron stars. It is clear that the object emitting the signals, somehow changes over time.

Scientists are inclined to think that the BR emitted magnetars or pulsars, and that with them there are processes as yet unknown science. In addition, it is possible that a large difference in the frequency of the signals caused by the fact that similar signals emit different objects. In the end, the gamma-ray bursts detected in the 1960s, too, at first were a mystery. After it became clear that they are of different species, because they can give rise to the processes taking place with supernovae or the collision of neutron stars.

Astronomers do not tend to write off all the aliens - but no one forbids us to imagine that long ago in a distant galaxy, there were grand events, the signals from which we have just now ...

Source: geektimes.ru/post/272140/