![]() A group of astronomers recently discovered a “strange and persistent radio signal” coming from deep space.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. “It shows how promising the field can be, because you’re not just going to do this for 30 bursts, you can do this for 30,000 bursts, make a new map of the structure of the universe, and use it to answer big questions about cosmology.” “The fact that FRBs are so common is also amazing,” Shannon said. “While we still don’t know what causes these massive bursts of energy, the paper confirms that fast radio bursts are common events in the cosmos and that we will be able to use them to detect matter between galaxies, and better understand the structure of the Universe,” Shannon said.Īstronomers said they hope that future radio telescopes, currently under construction in South Africa and Australia, will enable the detection of thousands more fast radio bursts at greater distances. Nearly 50 fast radio bursts have been traced to date back to their origin points, and about half of them have been found using ASKAP. ![]() Our measurements confirm the Macquart relation holds out to beyond half the known Universe.” “Some recent fast radio bursts appeared to break this relationship. This is now known as the Macquart relation,” Ryder said. “J-P showed that the (farther) away a fast radio burst is, the more diffuse gas it reveals between the galaxies. This method of using fast radio bursts to detect missing matter was demonstrated by the late Australian astronomer Jean-Pierre Macquart in 2020. “Even in space that is nearly perfectly empty they can ‘see’ all the electrons, and that allows us to measure how much stuff is between the galaxies.” “Fast radio bursts sense this ionised material,” Shannon said. So far, the results of current methods used to estimate the universe’s mass don’t agree with one another, which suggests the entire scope of the universe isn’t included. “We think that the missing matter is hiding in the space between galaxies, but it may just be so hot and diffuse that it’s impossible to see using normal techniques.” “If we count up the amount of normal matter in the Universe - the atoms that we are all made of - we find that more than half of what should be there today is missing,” said study coauthor Ryan Shannon, a professor at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, in a statement. Scientists believe that fast radio bursts may be a unique method that can be used to “weigh” the universe by measuring the matter between galaxies that remains unaccounted for. This finding aligns with current theories that suggest fast radio bursts may come from magnetars, or highly energetic objects that result from the explosions of stars. The research team traced the burst to what appears to be a group of two or three galaxies that are in the process of merging, interacting and forming new stars. “Then we used (the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope) in Chile to search for the source galaxy, finding it to be older and (farther) away than any other FRB source found to date and likely within a small group of merging galaxies.” ![]() ![]() Stuart Ryder, astronomer at Macquarie University in Australia, in a statement. “Using ASKAP’s array of (radio) dishes, we were able to determine precisely where the burst came from,” said study coauthor Dr. Astronomers used ASKAP to detect the FRB in June 2022 and determine where it originated. Radio telescopes have helped astronomers trace these quick cosmic flashes, including the ASKAP array of radio telescopes, located on Wajarri Yamaji Country in Western Australia. ![]()
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