(CN) — From over a billion light-years away and surrounded by a plasma cloud, a new radio wave is being pick up on Earth.
In a new study published in Nature, astronomers discovered a new radio signal strikingly different from other recorded radio bursts. Captured by the Canadian CHIME Experiment, a massive telescope that turns digital signals into three-dimensional hydrogen density maps, the novel radio wave is labeled FRB 20191221A.
Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, were first detected in 2007 and are a pulse of radio wave activity that usually only last a couple of milliseconds. The CHIME telescope has witnessed over a thousand radio burst sources since 2018. Though there is more study to be done on the burst origins and processes, it is estimated that approximately a thousand fast radio bursts arrive in Earth’s sky every day.
“There are not many things in the universe that emit strictly periodic signals. Examples that we know of in our own galaxy are radio pulsars and magnetars, which rotate and produce a beamed emission similar to a lighthouse. And we think this new signal could be a magnetar or pulsar on steroids,” says Daniele Michilli, a postdoc at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, in a press release.
With most signals coming and going like a flash, the new radio burst is a game-changer, as it puts out a persistent burst every few seconds.
“It was unusual. Not only was it very long, lasting about three seconds, but there were periodic peaks that were remarkably precise, emitting every fraction of a second — boom, boom, boom — like a heartbeat. This is the first time the signal itself is periodic,” Michilli added.
The burst is coming from a far-off galaxy, over a billion light-years away from Earth, and its source is thought to be over a million times brighter than neutron stars in our own Milky Way. Additionally, the burst source may usually be less bright, causing a train of radio waves to emit while it rotates.
Comparing the properties of FRB 20191221A to other signals caught by the CHIME telescope, it seems that a very turbulent plasma cloud surrounds the source.
“This detection raises the question of what could cause this extreme signal that we’ve never seen before, and how can we use this signal to study the universe. Future telescopes promise to discover thousands of FRBs a month, and at that point, we may find many more of these periodic signals,” Michilli noted.
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