Artificial Radio waves is one of the most common electromagnetic radiations in the modern world. Nowadays, people use it in broadcasting, radar, and other systems. However, natural radio waves come from the space objects and we will talk about one of these natural radio waves, Fast radio burst(FRB). On 9 January 2019, it is reported that the astronomers found the second repeating FRB source by using CHIME which is a new radio telescope in Canada. This repeating FRB source was from over 1.5 billion light years away and it was named as FRB 180814. But, what is FRB exactly?
CHIME experiment construction (Mateus A. Fandiño)
FRB is a transient radio pulse and the length of it start from a millisecond to a few milliseconds. Although FRBs is reported for multiple times, the repeating fast radio burst is quite rare and only two of the repeating FRB is FRB 121102 and this FRB 180814. The first signals from FRB 121102 were discovered in 2012 and it was confirmed that it was caused by plasma dispersion. However, FRB 121102 was observed by astronomer Paul Scholz in November 2015 again. He used the Arecibo radio telescope to find 10 repeating fast radio pulses from May 2015 TO June 2015. In the next few years, the FRB 121102 was recorded once again in 2016,2017 and 2018, this showed that it is not a one-time event.
But what are the sources of these FRBs? We are still yet to confirm the source of fast radio burst signals, but it is suggested that it could come from a highly magnetized rotating neutron star(pulsar). A neutron star is the collapsed core of a giant star. Some of the neutron stars will emit electromagnetic radiations such as FRB so that they can be detected by instruments.
Neutron Stars(NASA Goddard)
Some scientist suggested that the repeating FRB could come from an unknown extraterrestrial intelligence. They argued that the FRB repeating signals is an artificial stray blast and they are caused by spaceships. However, this is also a hypothesis and it is not be proven.
In conclusion, these “sources” for FRB are all assumptions and the source of FRB signals still remain to be unknown. Scientists are still working on it and looking forward to solving this mystery.
Siming tang
