Since its discovery in 2007, fast radio bursts (FRBs) have baffled astronomers. FRBs are powerful, millisecond-long radio bursts from space that produces as much energy during their brief existence as the Sun produces over a few days. Very little is known about what or how most FRBs are produced; most come from outside our Milky Way galaxy. However, one FRB that has never stopped repeating has been highlighted by a NEW study recently published in Science.
Using the five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) in China, astronomers identified the repeated burst in 2022 as FRB 20190520B. FRB 20190520B, which produces radio bursts a few times an hour, occasionally at different radio frequencies, is the rarest repeating FRB of all. Astronomers hurried to extend the original study using additional radio frequencies after discovering this exciting phenomenon.
Further research revealed that FRB 20190520B is located in a 3.9 billion light-year-distance dwarf galaxy, home to an incredibly dense environment. The FRB source is surrounded by substances that emit powerful, long-lasting radio waves. The exploding source was speculated to be a young neutron star in a complex environment as a result of this.
The burst emits potent signals at relatively high radio frequencies, according to observations of FRB 20190520B made with the CSIRO Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, the Green Bank Telescope in the United States, and the Murriyang radio telescope in Australia. The electromagnetic waves in these high-frequency transmissions turned out to be highly polarized, which means they are "waving" in one direction considerably more powerfully than in others.
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