Scientists a step closer to solving space mystery after uncovering signal pattern

Wednesday, 12 February 2020

Deep space is shrouded in mysteries, but astronomers might be a step closer to solving one of them.

For the first time, scientists in Canada have discovered a pattern in a series of signals coming from a galaxy half a billion light-years away.

These signals are called fast radio bursts (FRBs) which are bright, millisecond-duration radio signals originating from deep in space.

The powerful, high energy bursts are some of the most enigmatic phenomena in astronomy.

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A signal called FRB 121102 was captured in 2012 by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

* Scientists zoom in on mysterious fast radio bursts**

Since their discovery in 2007, scientists have done a lot of research into them but their origin is still unknown.

New research published in a Arxiv paper shows that scientists have found a regular signal pattern for one particular fast radio burst.

Scientists first spotted the FRB called 180916.J0158+65 while using data from the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment Fast Radio Burst Project (CHIME/FRB).

This particular FRB is located in a star-forming region in a 'nearby massive spiral galaxy'.

In their paper, which is moderated but not full peer-reviewed, scientists explain that FRB 180916.J0158+65 seems to have a 16-day pattern.

The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment during construction of the parabolic trough reflector at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in British Columbia, Canada.

Between September 16 2018 and October 30 2019, scientists recorded 28 bursts from it.

They discovered that there were four-day cycles of regular activity where strong radio waves were sent out into space on almost every hour. But then there was a quiet 12-day period.

The authors of the paper are part of the CHIME/FRB Collaboration.

Last year, the collaboration detected eight new repeating signal sources, including this one. Further research about fast radio bursts was published in the journal Nature last month.

Previously scientists have found that repeat burst times can vary from milliseconds to many days, and appear sporadically and clustered, without a regular pattern.

'The discovery of a 16.35-day periodicity in a repeating FRB source is an important clue to the nature of this object,' the authors wrote in their paper.

Scientists hope that they can trace the origin of these mysterious single and repeating signals to one day figure out what causes them.

The repeating pattern suggests that the source could be a celestial body of some kind orbiting around a star or another body, Phys.org states.

In this scenario, the signals would likely stop when obstructed by the other body. But that still doesn't explain how the signals were being sent out on such a regular basis.

In the past, an international team of astronomers traced another repeating signal to a region of star formation in a dim dwarf galaxy 3 billion light-years away.

There, they said, the high energy beam was being savagely twisted by a powerful magnetic field amid a dense cloud of hot, ionised gas.

Previously, people have theorised that these types of signals could come from cataclysmic events like a supernova or a collision of two stars. However this theory has been diminished somewhat after scientists discovered repeating signals.

Others have suggested the bursts were emitted by distant neutron stars, the super-dense embers of exploded suns. Some have even speculated FRBs could be aliens at work.

In their paper, the scientists consider possible causes but at this stage it's largely still a mystery.