Astronomers observed a short and sharp flashe of radio waves that came from an unknown source. This mysterious phenomena was discovered, in a way that was not possible with previous cases. These findings were published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 2007, Astronomers observed a brief burst radio wave that was only milliseconds in duration. This phenomenon was discovered accidentally in 2007, by scientists who scanned the archive data of the Parkes Radio Telescope, New South Wales. Six more bursts of this nature have since been recorded in Parkes telescope data. A seventh burst was found in data taken from Puerto Rico’s Arecibo telescope, the largest single aperture telescope in the world. Radio bursts are intense, but very brief. It lasted only milliseconds. (Credit: Swinburne Astronomy Productions. Photo by University of Copenhagen. Nearly all of these were found long after their occurrences. Since then, astronomers have been trying to spot them as soon as possible. Real-time detection of radio bursts An Australian team developed a method to detect these “Fast Radio Bursts”. This allowed them to be observed live. The technique was successful and now Emily Petroff (a Swinburne University of Technology PhD student in Astrophysics) has been able to see the first ever “live” radio burst using the Parkes telescope. Petroff stated that these bursts are often discovered weeks, months, or more than 10 years after their occurrence. One illustration of the Parkes radio telescope at CSIRO receiving the polarized signal from the new fast radio burst. The burst originated from an area in the universe that is 5.5 billion miles from Earth, according to the data gathered by astronomers. Once they had located the source of the burst, they alerted other telescopes in the world, both on the ground and from space to make follow-up observations at other wavelengths. Daniele Malesani is an astrophysicist from the Dark Cosmology Centre at Niels Bohr University of Copenhagen. He said that they were able to see light in the Xray region using the Swift telescope and two Xray sources there. The Nordic Optical Telescope was located at Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma, Canary Islands. Giorgos Luloudas is an astrophysicist from the Dark Cosmology Centre at Niels Bohr Institute University of Copenhagen. He also works for Weizmann Institute Israel. These quasars had nothing to do radio wave bursts but were just located in the same area.” Emily Petroff, Parkes observatory. Image: Emily Petroff’s site. Further investigations So what? Did they find anything? They found nothing, even though they captured the radio waves burst while it was occurring and made follow-up observations at different wavelengths, including ultraviolet and visible light. M. Malesani said, “We discovered what it was not.” It could have produced as much energy as the Sun in an entire day in just a few seconds. Parkes’ detection system detected the polarization (i.e. The direction that electromagnetic waves are oscillating (they can oscillate in a linear or circularly-polarized manner). It was more than 20% polarized. This suggests that there may be a magnetic field nearby. According to Mr. Malesani, the signal was more than 20% circularly polarized. This suggests that there is a magnetic field in the vicinity. We now know more about the things we should look for. Citation: “A radio wave burst is linked to a very compact type of object – such as neutron stars or black holes, and could be connected to collisions or’star quakes. Monthly Notices of Royal Astronomical Society. (February 11, 2015) Vol. 447 246-255 doi: 10. mnras/stu 2419 Published online first January HTML3_ HTML4_ HTML5_ HTML5_ HTML6_ HTML7_ HTML8_ HTML9_ HTML6_ HTML7_ HTML8_ HTML9_ HTML8_ HTML3_ HTML5_ HTML5_ HTML6_ HTML5_ HTML5_ HTML5_ HTML5_ HTML5_ HTML5_ HTML6_ HTML5_ HTML6_ HTML3_
