As Carl Sagan was fond of saying: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." Astronomers on the hunt for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence have detected 15 Fast Radio Bursts from a dwarf galaxy located three billion light-years away. These exotic pulses have confounded scientists since they were first discovered a decade ago by astronomers using the Parkes radio dish in Australia.
The Berkeley Astronomers Telegram reports that the source of these latest bursts, called FRB 121102, is the first to produce repeating FRBs, and this most recent batch of 15 pulses is further reaffirming its repeating nature, strongly ruling out a catastrophic source, such as a supernova explosion. Astronomers have now detected over 150 “high-energy pulses” from FRB 121102, which was discovered in 2012 and identified last year as coming from a dwarf galaxy.
The 15 new FRBs were detected by scientists working on the Breakthrough Listen project—a 10-year mission to search the skies for signs of extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs). Using the Green Bank Radio Telescope in West Virginia, the Breakthrough Listen team at UC Berkeley picked up the unusual signals on Monday August 28th. The larger astronomical community was quickly alerted.
To read more, click here.