We Finally Know What's Been Making Fast Radio Bursts (arstechnica.com) 14
Today, researchers are announcing they've solved one of the questions that's been nagging them over the past decade: what exactly produces the weird phenomena known as fast radio bursts (FRBs)? From a report: As their name implies, FRBs involve a sudden blast of radio-frequency radiation that lasts just a few microseconds. We didn't even know that FRBs existed until 2007 but have since cataloged hundreds of them; some come from sources that repeatedly emit them, while others seem to burst once and go silent. Obviously, you can produce this sort of sudden surge of energy by destroying something. But the existence of repeating sources suggests that at least some of them are produced by an object that survives the event. That's led to a focus on compact objects, like neutron stars and black holes, with a class of neutron stars called magnetars being viewed very suspiciously. Those suspicions have now been borne out, as astronomers have watched a magnetar in our own galaxy sending out an FRB at the same time it emitted pulses of high-energy gamma rays. This doesn't answer all our questions, as we're still not sure how the FRBs are produced or why only some of the gamma-ray outbursts from this magnetar are associated with FRBs. But the confirmation will give us a chance to look more carefully at the extreme physics of magnetars as we try to understand what's going on.
Is it WKRP in Cincinnati? (Score:3, Funny)
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No Aliens For You (Score:3)
Just more star and space noise from a gassy galaxy.
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I just assumed that aliens hadn't rescinded the rule restricting Novice Class to CW.
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"Just more star and space noise from a gassy galaxy."
It's the galactic peer2peer file sharing protocol coming alive when a seeder gets detected.
They just put all the data in tiny bursts, to avoid the GRIA. (Galactic Record Industry Association)
Re: A T & T (Score:2)
That was Verizon.
How much time do you need? (Score:2)
Well, maybe. (Score:5, Informative)
"We finally know" is a little bit strong.
There's also the question of whether the SGR 1935+2154 event was really an FRB of the type being detecting all along. Based on its properties and those of other astronomical phenomena, the STARE2 team finds the event is obviously closest to FRBs. But it's not quite in the cluster with them, largely because of its energy. The teams calculate that the event released about 1034 ergs (1027 joules, or 1011 megatons). Typical FRBs start out 100 times more powerful than that and go up considerably from there, maxing out at over 1043 ergs.
While this is clearly compelling and likely to be a big step in understanding FRBs, there's just enough uncertainty to keep astrophysicists arguing for a while longer. Still, the fact that a magnetar can produce something that looks so much like an FRB is likely to have a major influence on thinking.
More mundane causes (Score:2)
Ballasts, heavy machinery switching on/off, a cheap Walmart TV with poor RF sheilding....
Have they eliminated all of these possibilities first?
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Ballasts, heavy machinery switching on/off, a cheap Walmart TV with poor RF sheilding....
Have they eliminated all of these possibilities first?
Yes. Rather famously, one of the earlier ones was a microwave oven. But that got figured out years ago.