International Team of Astronomers Reports on Immense Mysterious Fast Radio Bursts
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An international team of astronomers recently observed more than 1,650 fast radio bursts (FRBs) detected from one source in deep space, which amounts to the largest set - by far - of the mysterious phenomena ever recorded.
More than a decade after the discovery of FRBs, astronomers are still baffled by the origins of the millisecond-long, cosmic explosions that each produce the energy equivalent to the sun's annual output.
In a study published in the Oct. 13 issue of the journal Nature, scientists - including UNLV astrophysicist Bing Zhang - report on the discovery of a total of 1,652 independent FRBs from one source over the course of 47 days in 2019. The source, dubbed FRB 121102, was observed using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in China, and represents more FRBs in one event than all previous reported occurrences combined.
[...] According to Zhang, there are two active models for where FRBs come from. One could be that they come from magnetospheres, or within a magnetar's strong magnetic field. Another theory is that FRBs form from relativistic shocks outside the magnetosphere traveling at the speed of light.
These results pose great challenges to the latter model," says Zhang. The bursts are too frequent and - given that this episode alone amounts to 3.8% of the energy available from a magnetar - it adds up to too much energy for the second model to work."
Journal Reference:
D. Li, P. Wang, W. W. Zhu, et al. A bimodal burst energy distribution of a repeating fast radio burst source, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03878-5)
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2
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