Surprising New Features of Mysterious Fast Radio Bursts Defy Current Understanding



An worldwide team of researchers makes observations that defy our existing understanding, including the location of the source for deep-space rapid radio bursts and a changing, magnetic environment.

The energy released by one fast radio burst (FRB), a millisecond-long cosmic explosion, is equal to the sun's annual output. More than 15 years after their initial discovery, deep-space pulses of electromagnetic radio waves still astound scientists with their puzzling nature. Recent research just adds to the enigma surrounding them.                                                                                              
Unexpected new findings from a collection of cosmic radio bursts by an international team of researchers cast doubt on the conventional wisdom on the physical makeup and primary source of FRBs. Astrophysicist Bing Zhang from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) and his colleagues published their findings in the journal Nature on September 21.

In Guizhou, China, there is a natural dip in the topography where the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) is situated. With a 500 meter (1,600 foot) diameter dish and a reception area equivalant to 30 football fields, it is the largest single-dish radio telescope in the world. FAST is expected to continue to be a top-tier technology for the next 20 to 30 years. FAST has developed a new method for building big radio telescopes by surpassing the 100-meter engineering restriction for telescope construction.

The huge Five Hundred Meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) in China was used to observe the cosmic FRB in late spring 2021. The scientists discovered 1,863 bursts from the fast radio burst source FRB 20201124A in 82 hours spread over 54 days. Heng Xu, Kejia Lee, Subo Dong from Peking University, Weiwei Zhu from the National Astronomical Observatories of China, and Zhang served as the group's leaders.

According to Lee, this is the largest sample of FRB data from a single source that includes polarization information.

Recent studies of a fast radio burst from our Milky Way galaxy reveal that it came from a magnetar, a massive neutron star the size of a city with an extremely strong magnetic field. On the other hand, it is still unknown where the really far-off cosmic rapid radio bursts come from. Scientists are now reevaluating what they believed to be known about them in light of the most recent observations.

The Nevada Center for Astrophysics at UNLV was founded by Zhang, who also stated that these observations forced them to start over. It is evident that FRBs are more enigmatic than we had thought. It will take further multi-wavelength observational efforts to fully understand these things.

The Dawodang depression, a natural basin in Pingtang County, Guizhou, southwest China, is home to the Five Hundred Meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), also known as Tianyan ("Eye of the Sky/Heaven"). It is made out of a fixed dish with a 500-meter diameter that was built in a naturally occurring dip in the landscape. It is the second-biggest single-dish aperture in the world after the sparsely filled RATAN-600 in Russia. It is also the largest filled-aperture radio telescope in the world.

The irregular, brief oscillations of the so-called "Faraday rotation measure," which is essentially the strength of the magnetic field and particle density close to the FRB source, are what scientists find surprising about the most recent data. During the first 36 days of observation, the changes fluctuated up and down before abruptly ceasing during the final 18 days before the source extinguished.

Zhang remarked, "I compare it to making a movie of a FRB source's surrounds, and our movie revealed a complex, dynamically changing, magnetized world that was never envisioned before. "Such a setting is not logically anticipated for a lonely magnetar. The FRB engine may be accompanied by something else, potentially a binary companion, said Zhang.

The team of scientists also used the 10-m Keck telescopes on Hawaii's Mauna Kea to view the host galaxy of the FRB. Young magnetars are thought to live in star-forming regions of star-forming galaxies, according to Zhang, but the optical image of the host galaxy unexpectedly reveals that it is a metal-rich barred spiral galaxy similar to our Milky Way. There isn't much star formation in the area where the FRB is located.

"This location is inconsistent with a young magnetar central engine generated following an intense explosion such as a protracted gamma-ray burst or a superluminous supernova," added Dong.

By UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, LAS VEGAS 

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