FAST
RADIO BURST - SCI & TECH
News: Scientists trace powerful radio
signal to most distant galaxy yet
What's
in the news?
●
Every day and night, hundreds of thousands
of intense, brief flashes of radiation suddenly flicker on and then off all
across the sky.
●
These “fast radio bursts” are invisible to
the naked eye, but to a radio telescope many almost outshine everything else in
the sky for a few thousandths of a second.
Fast
Radio Bursts:
●
They are mysterious emissions of radio light (or Radio Waves) that come from
the far reaches of the universe.
●
FRBs reach Earth from faraway galaxies, emitting as much energy in a millisecond as the
sun does over weeks.
●
They are the brightest radio bursts found in nature.
●
Astrophysicists have only been able to
'see' FRBs momentarily using large radio telescopes, but their precise origins
and causes are unknown.
●
Some FRBs are 'one-off' phenomena, while
others are repeaters, flashing earth intermittently.
●
The phenomenon was first reported in 2007.
● A defining property of these bursts is their dispersion, the bursts produce a spectrum of radio waves, and as the waves travel through matter, they spread out or disperse with bursts at higher radio frequencies arriving at telescopes earlier than those at lower frequencies.
Significance: