Mysterious Repeating Radio Burst From Space Is Back, Exactly Right on Time

Photo credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
Photo credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

From Popular Mechanics

  • New research has confirmed the cyclical nature of a mysterious fast radio burst called FRB 121102.

  • Fast radio bursts are pulses of radio waves that emanate from a distant point in the cosmos.

  • In June, researchers published an article theorizing that the burst of radio waves would appear once every 157 days.


It's baaaaack: Multiple teams of astronomers have spotted the mysterious fast radio burst (FRB) 121102 yet again, confirming a theory that the burst of radio waves appears at measurable intervals.

Fast radio bursts, which astronomers first discovered in 2007, have become one of the most intriguing celestial phenomena around. These pulses of radio waves flash at repeated intervals across the cosmos, kind of like the light that emanates from a lighthouse. Some scientists have suggested they may come from distant explosions in clouds of gas and dust created by a type of young neutron star, called a magnetar. But no one has been able to confirm their actual origins.

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Researchers have been tracking FRB 121102 for almost a decade. In June, a group of scientists published an article in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, which theorized the radio burst would crop up roughly every 157 days and would become active again in July and August.

Sure enough, FRB 121102 popped back up right on cue.

A separate group of researchers used a powerful suite of telescopes to confirm this theory by measuring 36 distinct FRBs between September 2017 and June 2020. To track this cluster of bursts, they used Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, the Efferlsberg Radio Telescope in Germany, and the Gran Telescope Canaria, an optical telescope in the Canary Islands. They also tapped NuSTAR, an X-ray telescope, and the gamma-ray seeking INTEGRAL telescope, both of which orbit Earth.

Through these observations, the scientists discovered the FRB does, in fact, have a periodicity similar to what had been predicted in June. This latest team found it to be closer to 161 days, give or take 5 days. They also noted the FRB's period of activity will likely stretch between July 9 and October 14 of this year. They published their findings to the preprint server arXiv.org earlier this month.

Even more scientists from the National Astronomy Observatory of China have also spotted FRB 121102. They used China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) to conduct their research. In mid-August, they observed a series of 12 radio wave bursts and calculated that the mysterious signals wake up roughly every 156 days, further deepening the mystery. The scientists posted their findings to The Astronomer's Telegram on August 27.

By nailing down this celestial oddity's schedule, scientists can plan to make high quality observations of the FRB in the future. Eventually, these observations could help them pinpoint the source once and for all.

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