Scientists at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico recently made an exciting discovery while searching for signs of repeating interstellar signals in their hundreds of terabytes of digitized data. A “fast radio burst” was detected, which is a new and unexpected phenomenon, according to principal investigator and Canada Research Chair in Observational Astrophysics at McGill University, Victoria Kaspi.
The discovery of a split-second burst of radio waves confirms a previous finding by researchers using the Parkes radio telescope in Australia, and eliminates any doubt, Kaspi said, that these radio bursts are truly of cosmic origin. The impact is being celebrated by groups around the world who are “very excited by the discovery and are keen to attach the puzzle of the origin of these bursts,” she added.
The unusual pulse was detected on November 2, 2012, at the Arecibo Observatory, a facility sponsored by the National Science Foundation and that boasts the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope, with a radio-mirror dish spanning 305 metres and covering about 20 acres.
As for where these bursts are originating, Kaspi said that “No one really knows… Perhaps once we've learned more about them we'll be able to connect them to other knowledge about objects in the Universe. There are ideas like coalescing neutron stars, coalescing white dwarfs, some strange kind of supernova, or possibly a magnetar burst. But the truth is, we know too little about the phenomenon so far to be able to determine their origin, beyond that they are likely a very large distance from us, well beyond our Milky Way galaxy.”
Kaspi believes there is potential to conduct future research on this project in Canada.
“The upcoming CHIME telescope, being built in British Columbia, in principle could be a superb burst detector, and we have submitted a funding proposal to outfit the telescope with burst detection instrumentation. We hope with CHIME to collect tens of thousands of such bursts, which will be very helpful for understanding their origin.”