A cosmic blast called “RBFLOAT” has been found 130 million light-years away, making it the brightest and closest fast radio burst (FRB) ever seen. Thanks to the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment’s new Outriggers, scientists were able to trace the source of this event to the edge of a galaxy’s star-forming region.
Fast Radio Bursts are powerful surges of radio energy lasting just a few thousandths of a second. They can shine more brightly than every other radio source in their home galaxy and have been detected from billions of light-years away, across half the universe. However, researchers still do not know what produces these bursts.
An international group of scientists has identified an exceptionally bright FRB located about 130 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major. This event is among the nearest FRBs ever found and also the brightest on record. The brilliance earned it the informal nickname “radio brightest flash of all time.”
The discovery was made possible by recent upgrades to the CHIME telescope, which includes the Outriggers array. The ability to capture this event so clearly came from these improvements. The CHIME Telescope is a large radio telescope made up of long, curved antennae in British Columbia.
Researchers believe that the source of the new FRB may be an older magnetar, young neutron stars with extremely powerful magnetic fields. These theories suggest that magnetars are found in the center of star formation regions, where the youngest, most active stars are forged.
The precise localization of this burst allowed scientists to study the environment around the signal for clues to what produces these bursts. The new FRB appears to be a one-off event, at least in the last six years. This finding is exciting because it provides scientists with their best chance yet to investigate FRBs and the environments where they form.
With this discovery, researchers can probe the environment in and around the burst for clues to what might produce non-repeating FRBs. The hope is that a larger sample of FRBs localized to their host environments can help reveal the full diversity of these populations.
Source: https://scitechdaily.com/brightest-radio-flash-ever-detected-lights-up-nearby-galaxy