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Artist's impression of CSIRO's Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope observing 'fast radio bursts' in 'fly's eye mode'. Each antenna points in a different direction, giving maximum sky coverage. Credit: OzGrav, Swinburne University of Technology
Australian researchers using a CSIRO radio telescope in Western Australia have nearly doubled the famous number of 'fast radio bursts'- powerful flashes of radio waves from deep space.
The team's discoveries include the closest and brightest fast radio bursts ever detected.
Their findings were reported today in the journal Nature.
Fast radio bursts come from all over the sky and last for just milliseconds.
Scientists do not know what causes them but it must involve incredible energy-equivalent to the amount released by the Sun in 80 years.
"We've found 20 fast radio bursts in a year," said lead author Dr. Ryan Shannon, from Swinburne University of Technology and the OzGrav ARC Center of Excellence.
"Using the new technology of the Australia Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), we've also found that fast radio bursts are coming from the other side of the universe rather than from our own galactic neighborhood."
Co-author Dr. Jean-Pierre Macquart, from the Curtin University node of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), said
An artist's impression of CSIRO's ASKAP radio telescope detecting a fast radio burst (FRB). Scientists do not know what causes FRBs but it must involve incredible energy – equivalent to the amount released by the Sun in 80 years. Credit: OzGrav, Swinburne University of Technology
"Each time this happens, the different wavelengths that make up a burst are slowed by different amounts," he said.
"Eventually, the burst reaches an Earth with its spread of wavelengths arriving at the telescope at different ends, like a swimmers at a finish line.
"Timing the arrival of the different wavelengths"
"And because we've gotten so far, we can use them to detect galaxies-which is a really exciting discovery."
CSIRO's Dr. Keith Bannister, who's the engineered systems that said the bursts, said ASKAP's phenomenal discovery rate is down to two things.
"The telescope has a whopping field of view of 30 square degrees, 100 times larger than the full moon," he said.
"And, by using the telescope's dish antennas in a radical way, with each pointing at a different part of the sky, we observed 240 square degrees all at once-about a thousand times the area of the full moon.
"ASKAP is astoundingly good for this work."
Antennas of Australian CSIRO's SKA Pathfinder with the Milky Way overhead. Credit: Alex Cherney / CSIRO
Dr. Shannon said we do not know what they are or what galaxies they come from.
The team's next challenge is to pinpoint the locations of bursts on the sky.
"We'll be able to locate the bursts to a thousandth of a degree," Dr. Shannon said.
"That's about the width of a human hair seen ten meters away, and good enough to fit a particular galaxy."
ASKAP is located at CSIRO's Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO) in Western Australia and is a precursor for the future Square Kilometer Array (SKA) telescope.
The SKA could observe large numbers of fast radio bursts, giving astronomers a way to study the early Universe in detail.
The researchers and their institutions acknowledge the Wajarri Yamaji as the traditional owners of the MRO site.
Explore further:
ASKAP telescope to rule radio-burst hunt
More information:
R. M. Shannon et al, The dispersion-brightness relation for fast radio bursts from a wide-field survey, Nature (2018). DOI: 10.1038 / s41586-018-0588-y
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