Puerto Rico: Scientists are baffled by the repeating burst of the radio waves from the same location. These fast radio bursts are believed to be originating from a dense stellar core near powerful magnetic field like one near a massive black hole.
According to a news article published in Express.co.uk, these fast radio bursts (FRB’s) last for only milliseconds but generate more energy than the sun does in weeks.
The bursting of these radio waves have remained a mystery for scientists because of their brief period for which they occur. They were first discovered in 2007 and researchers have detected 20 such FRB’s in the last decade but according to few estimates they occur as many as 10,000 times a day across the entire sky.
According to Professor Hessels, “A key question in the field is whether this repeating fast radio burst source is fundamentally different compared to all the other apparently non-repeating sources.”
Using the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and in the west Virginia, scientists have studied the FRB.
A signal known as FRB 121102 can explode repeatedly which suggests it does not come from a cataclysmic event.
According to Professor Hessels, FRB 121102 comes from a star-forming region of a dwarf galaxy found about 3 billion light-years from Earth.
One of the feature of these radio waves is their polarisation, on which researchers focused. It is found that FRB 121102’s waves are short and polarised with most of the waves rippling in the same direction.
Professor Hessels and other researchers found that FRB 121102 had radio bursts which were more than 500 times more twisted than those from any other FRB. Mr. Hessels also said that “I couldn’t believe my eyes when I first saw the data. Such extreme Faraday rotation is extremely rare.
He further added that “I and many others would love to know whether this fast radio burst phenomenon has a single or multiple physical origins.