However, CHIME is being upgraded through a project where additional telescopes, currently under construction, will observe together and be able to triangulate radio bursts to specific galaxies, he said.īut the signal does contain clues about where it came from and what may have caused it. While CHIME is primed to search for bursts of radio waves, it’s not as good at locating their origin points. The research team doesn’t know the exact galaxy from which the burst originated and even the distance estimate of a billion light-years is “highly uncertain,” Michilli said. While FRB 20191221A has not yet repeated, “the signal is formed by a train of consecutive peaks that we found to be separated by ~0.2 seconds,” he said in an email. This is the first time the signal itself is periodic.” “Not only was it very long, lasting about three seconds, but there were periodic peaks that were remarkably precise, emitting every fraction of a second - boom, boom, boom - like a heartbeat. The signal is the longest-lasting fast radio burst to date. Michilli was monitoring the data as it came in from CHIME, when the burst occurred.

Pictured is the large radio telescope CHIME that picked up the burst FRB 20191221A. The signal, named FRB 20191221A, lasted for up to three seconds – which is about 1,000 times longer than typical fast radio bursts. This telescope, in operation since 2018, constantly observes the sky and, in addition to fast radio bursts, is sensitive to radio waves emitted by distant hydrogen in the universe.Īstronomers using CHIME spotted something on December 21, 2019, that immediately caught their attention: a fast radio burst that was “peculiar in many ways,” according to Daniele Michilli, a postdoctoral researcher in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.

One resource used to spot them is a radio telescope called the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, or CHIME, at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in British Columbia, Canada. New unusual repeating fast radio burst detected 3 billion light-years awayįast radio bursts are so quick and unexpected that they’re difficult to observe. Magnetars are a leading candidate for what generates Fast Radio Bursts.Ĭredit: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF Artist's conception of a neutron star with an ultra-strong magnetic field, called a magnetar, emitting radio waves (red).

Cnn radio signal from space