(Yicai Global) June 9 – Scientists have discovered a very active, repetitive high-speed radio broadcast (FRB), just the second example of its kind that hints at the evolutionary picture of these mysterious cosmic events.
FRBs are the brightest astronomical transitions lasting milliseconds in radio bands of as yet unknown origin. Less than five percent of those ever discovered are repetitive, and only a few are permanently active.
Using the five-hundred-meter spherical radio telescope (FAST), also known as China Sky Eye, an international team led by astronomers from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) has discovered and localized an actively repeating high-speed radio broadcast called FRB 20190520B in a metal-poor dwarf galaxy nearly three billion light-years from Earth.
Subsequently, telescopes, including the Very Large Array, the Palomar Telescope, the Keck Telescope, the Subaru Telescope and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, continued observations, respectively, to confirm FRB 20190520B.
The scientists said that FRB 20190520B appears to be in a complex plasma environment, similar to that of a super-luminous supernova, suggesting it may be a “newborn”.
This is the second example of a highly active FRB with repetitive bursts and constant radio emissions between bursts coming from a compact region since the opening of the first FRB repeater 20121102A in 2016, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The differences between the two FRBs and all the others suggest the possibility of having two different types of FRBs, the researchers said.
Now, candidates for FRB sources are superdense neutron stars left over from the explosion of a massive supernova star, or neutron stars with superstrong magnetic fields called magnetars.
Astronomers have said that there may be two different mechanisms, or that the objects that produce them act differently at different stages of their evolution.
“We further postulate that FRB 20121102A and FRB 20190520B represent the initial stage of a growing population of FRBs,” said article co-correspondent Li Di with NAOC.
“A coherent picture of the origins and evolution of the FRB is likely to emerge in just a few years,” Lee said.
Located in a naturally deep and round karst depression in the southwestern Chinese province of Guizhou, FAST officially began operations in January 2020 and officially opened to the world on March 31, 2021. It is considered to be the most sensitive radio telescope in the world.
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