24/7 Space News
STELLAR CHEMISTRY
Astronomers thought they understood fast radio bursts. A recent one calls that into question
illustration only
Astronomers thought they understood fast radio bursts. A recent one calls that into question
by Robert Sanders for Berkeley News
Berkeley CA (SPX) Jan 22, 2025

Astronomer Calvin Leung was excited last summer to crunch data from a newly commissioned radio telescope to precisely pinpoint the origin of repeated bursts of intense radio waves - so-called fast radio bursts (FRBs) - emanating from somewhere in the northern constellation Ursa Minor.

Leung, a Miller Postdoctoral Fellowship recipient at the University of California, Berkeley, hopes eventually to understand the origins of these mysterious bursts and use them as probes to trace the large-scale structure of the universe, a key to its origin and evolution. He had written most of the computer code that allowed him and his colleagues to combine data from several telescopes to triangulate the position of a burst to within a hair's width at arm's length.

The excitement turned to perplexity when his collaborators on the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) turned optical telescopes on the spot and discovered that the source was in the distant outskirts of a long-dead elliptical galaxy that by all rights should not contain the kind of star thought to produce these bursts.

Instead of finding an expected "magnetar" - a highly magnetized, spinning neutron star left over from the core collapse of a young, massive star - "now the question was: How are you going to explain the presence of a magnetar inside this old, dead galaxy?" Leung said.

The young stellar remnants that theorists think produce these millisecond bursts of radio waves should have disappeared long ago in the 11.3-billion-year-old galaxy, located 2 billion light years from Earth and weighing more than 100 billion times the mass of the sun.

"This is not only the first FRB to be found outside a dead galaxy, but compared to all other FRBs, it's also the farthest from the galaxy it's associated with. The FRB's location is surprising and raises questions about how such energetic events can occur in regions where no new stars are forming," said Vishwangi Shah, a doctoral student at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, who refined and extended Leung's initial calculations about the location of the burst, called FRB 20240209A.

Shah is the corresponding author of a study of the FRB published (Tuesday, Jan. 21) in the Astrophysical Journal Letters along with a second paper by colleagues at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Leung, a co-author of both papers, is a lead developer of three companion telescopes - so-called outriggers - to the original CHIME radio array located near Penticton, British Columbia. He mentored Shah at McGill while Leung was a doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and subsequently held an Einstein Postdoctoral Fellowship at UC Berkeley prior to his Miller fellowship.

New CHIME outrigger in California

A third outrigger radio array will go online this week at Hat Creek Observatory, a facility in Northern California formerly owned and operated by UC Berkeley and now managed by the SETI Institute in Mountain View. Together, the four arrays will immensely improve CHIME's ability to precisely locate FRBs.

"When paired with the three outriggers, we should be able to accurately pinpoint one FRB a day to its galaxy, which is substantial," Leung said. "That's 20 times better than CHIME, with two outrigger arrays."

With this new precision, optical telescopes can pivot to identify the type of star groups - globular clusters, spiral galaxies - that produce the bursts and hopefully identify the stellar source. Of the 5,000 or so sources detected to date - over 95% of which were detected by CHIME - few have been isolated to a specific galaxy, which has hindered efforts to confirm whether magnetars or any other type of star are the source.

As detailed in the new paper, Shah averaged many bursts from the repeating FRB to improve the pinpointing accuracy provided by the CHIME array and one outrigger array in British Columbia. After its discovery in February 2024, astronomers recorded 21 more bursts through July 31. Since the paper was submitted, Shion Andrew at MIT incorporated data from a second outrigger at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia to confirm Shah's published position with 20 times the precision.

"This result challenges existing theories that tie FRB origins to phenomena in star-forming galaxies," said Shah. "The source could be in a globular cluster, a dense region of old, dead stars outside the galaxy. If confirmed, it would make FRB 20240209A only the second FRB linked to a globular cluster."

She noted, however, that the other FRB originating in a globular cluster was associated with a live galaxy, not an old elliptical in which star formation ceased billions of years ago.

"It's clear that there's still a lot of exciting discovery space when it comes to FRBs and that their environments could hold the key to unlocking their secrets," said Tarraneh Eftekhari, who has an Einstein Postdoctoral Fellowship at Northwestern and first author of the second paper.

"CHIME and its outrigger telescopes will let us do astrometry at a level unmatched by the Hubble Space Telescope or the James Webb Space Telescope. It'll be up to them to drill down to find the source," Leung added. "It's an amazing radio telescope."

Research Report:A Repeating Fast Radio Burst Source in the Outskirts of a Quiescent Galaxy

Related Links
University of California - Berkeley
Stellar Chemistry, The Universe And All Within It

Subscribe Free To Our Daily Newsletters
Tweet

RELATED CONTENT
The following news reports may link to other Space Media Network websites.
STELLAR CHEMISTRY
MIT scientists pin down the origins of a fast radio burst
Boston MA (SPX) Jan 06, 2025
Fast radio bursts are brief and brilliant explosions of radio waves emitted by extremely compact objects such as neutron stars and possibly black holes. These fleeting fireworks last for just a thousandth of a second and can carry an enormous amount of energy - enough to briefly outshine entire galaxies. Since the first fast radio burst (FRB) was discovered in 2007, astronomers have detected thousands of FRBs, whose locations range from within our own galaxy to as far as 8 billion light-years away ... read more

STELLAR CHEMISTRY
NASA Opens New Challenge to Inspire Climate Solutions

Satellite technology paves way for space traffic management

India becomes 4th nation to complete unmanned docking in space

India achieves 'historic' space docking mission

STELLAR CHEMISTRY
China's Hainan Commercial Launch Center expands with two new launch pads

General Atomics tests advanced nuclear thermal propulsion fuel at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center

Rocket Lab to launch wildfire detection satellites for OroraTech

UK approves first vertical rocket launch

STELLAR CHEMISTRY
The Mars Pivot

ORBIMARS: A proposed terminology for Mars orbital operations

Now That's Ingenuity: First Aircraft Measurement of Winds on Another Planet

NASA Sets Sights on Mars Terrain with Revolutionary Tire Tech

STELLAR CHEMISTRY
China unveils logos for three space missions in 2025

China launches additional satellites for Spacesail Constellation

Shenzhou XIX crew completes second spacewalk mission

Shenzhou XIX crew completes second spacewalk

STELLAR CHEMISTRY
South American Space Programs: No Cooperation, No Gains

Stoke Space secures $260M in Series C Funding

The Tyranny of the VC Equation Why Your Company Might Not Be "VC-able"

The Space Economy to Reach $944 Billion by 2033

STELLAR CHEMISTRY
Flexential Links Up with Lonestar to Support First Commercial Space Data Center

Surrey Satellite Opens Advanced Imaging R&D Cleanroom

NASA's OSIRIS-APEX completes 2nd perihelion of solar orbit

Zenno expands superconducting space technologies in Japan

STELLAR CHEMISTRY
Astronauts to Collect Microbial Samples from Space Station Exterior

Extreme supersonic winds detected on distant exoplanet

Double the disks double the discovery new insights into planet formation in DF Tau

Bioactive compounds with industrial applications discovered in Andes bacteria

STELLAR CHEMISTRY
SwRI models suggest Pluto and Charon formed similarly to Earth and Moon

Citizen scientists help decipher Jupiter's cloud composition

Capture theory unveils how Pluto and Charon formed as a binary system

Texas A and M researchers illuminate the mysteries of icy ocean worlds

Subscribe Free To Our Daily Newsletters




The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2024 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. All articles labeled "by Staff Writers" include reports supplied to Space Media Network by industry news wires, PR agencies, corporate press officers and the like. Such articles are individually curated and edited by Space Media Network staff on the basis of the report's information value to our industry and professional readership. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Statement Our advertisers use various cookies and the like to deliver the best ad banner available at one time. All network advertising suppliers have GDPR policies (Legitimate Interest) that conform with EU regulations for data collection. By using our websites you consent to cookie based advertising. If you do not agree with this then you must stop using the websites from May 25, 2018. Privacy Statement. Additional information can be found here at About Us.