Mysterious Fast Radio Burst Detected In Nearby Galaxy

Astronomers have been puzzled with the mysteries surrounding fast radio bursts (FRB) for over a decade, but their physical origin remains unknown. An international research team traced the location of a second known repeating FRB to a nearby spiral galaxy, but the find only opened up more questions than answers.

Fast Radio Bursts

FRBs are brief, bright extragalactic radio flashes of energy that pop up for mere milliseconds. There are two types of FRBs: non-repeating events, which are one-offs, and repeating events that flash multiple times.

Although there have been hundreds of records of such bursts, astronomers have only pinpointed the precise location of only a handful of the bursts and their actual physical origin remains unknown.

In fact, of the detected FRBs, only four have been associated with a host galaxy and just one of which is repeating.

In a new study published in the journal Nature, a team of researchers reports the fifth localization of an FRB, now called 180916.J0158+65. Since detected FRB was repeating, it also marks the second time scientists have pinpointed the location of a repeating FRB.

Host Galaxy

However, apart from detecting the location of an FRB, an even more important matter is determining the type of galaxy in which it was located. In this case, through a technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry, the repeating FRB was detected in the “arm” of a Milky Way-like spiral galaxy half a billion light-years away.

Although it seems incredibly far, it is actually the nearest FRB to have been localized so far. In fact, it is seven times closer than the other localized repeating FRB and over 10 times closer than non-repeating ones that have been traced.

Being this close, and with the precision afforded by Very Long Baseline Interferometry, it could help researchers further understand the origins of FRBs. In fact, the team achieved a high-resolution level comparable to having a person on Earth distinguishing someone on the Moon.

“Identifying the host galaxy for FRBs is critical to tell us about what kind of environments FRBs live in, and thus what might actually be producing FRBs,” co-author Sarah Burke-Spolaor said. “This is a question for which scientists are still grasping at straws.”

New Mystery

The first repeating burst was discovered in a dwarf galaxy containing metals and formed stars. According to Burke-Spolair, this led to research papers saying that repeating fast radio bursts are produced in magnetars or neutron stars with strong magnetic fields.

Although that could be true, the new fast radio burst opens the possibility for other, or perhaps even multiple, origins.