[ad_1]
Rapid radio bursts are one of the most exciting phenomena in astronomy, and Berkeley scientists have made a major breakthrough in this field.
Rapid radio bursts are a growing area of interest for expert astronomers around the world. The FRB is manifested by brief strong radio waves emanating from deep space.
One of the most intriguing astronomical puzzles of 2017 was the discovery of 15 FRB from a galaxy located 3 billion light-years away. The FRBs were first detected in 2012, but the 2017 instance showed that gusts originated from FRB repeater 121102.
The same team that discovered the FRB in 2017, Breakthrough Listen, continued its work in recent months. The project operates under the SETI Institute (Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and is based at the University of California, Berkeley. The researchers were able to exploit machine learning to discover 72 gigantic FRBs of 3 billion light-years.
Use ML to track fast radio bursts
The scientists used a new ML algorithm to re-examine the data from the FRB repeater source 121102. The original data had been acquired in 2017 by the Green Bank Telescope in the US state of West Virginia. The vast amounts of information were analyzed originally using traditional methods.
Gerry Zhang, a doctoral student at the university, has developed an algorithm called a "convolutional neural network" to mark FRBs in the 400 TB of data. The total number of FRBs of repeater 121102 is now 93.
Zhang said, "This work is only the beginning of the use of these powerful methods to detect radio transients. We hope that our success could inspire other serious efforts in the application of machine learning to radio astronomy.
Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center and principal investigator of Breakthrough Listen, said, "This work is exciting not only because it helps us to understand more fully the dynamic behavior of fast radio gusts, but also to promise. to use machine learning to detect signals missed by conventional algorithms.
Pete Worden, executive director of Breakthrough Initiatives, which includes Breakthrough Listen, said, "Not all discoveries come from new observations. In this case, it was an intelligent and original reflection applied to an existing dataset. He advanced our knowledge of one of the most enticing mysteries of astronomy. "
According to the researchers, the source of these broadcasts is still unclear. One theory involves highly magnetized neutron stars struck by gas flows from a nearby supermassive black hole. Others suggest that bursting properties are compatible with the signatures of technologies developed by advanced civilizations.
Source link
