MYSTERIES UNIVERSE OF THE MYSTERIOUS BURSTS FROM SPACE
Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are bright flashes of radio emissions that only last a fraction of a second. But ever since they were discovered in 2007 by Duncan Lorimer and David Narkevic using data taken by the radio dish at the Parkes Observatory in Australia, astronomers have devoted many hours, days, months and years to figuring out what may be causing them.
In truth, it hasn’t been an easy task. Over all that time, these transient radio pulses have only been detected a little over 100 times, and because they are typically observed to burst only once, it has been very tricky to pinpoint exactly where they have been coming from, making further study near-impossible.
“The difficulty in localising FRBs within distant galaxies stems from the fact that the vast majority of them are detected only once,” affirms American theoretical physicist Avi Loeb, who is professor of science at Harvard University. What’s needed are signals that repeat, and as luck would have it, a few handfuls have been found.
The first repeater FRB was observed in 2012, with the frequent hiccups of FRB 121102 turning expectations and theories on their
