Canada’s CHIME telescope has helped an international team of astronomers discover a new source of repeating fast radio bursts (FRBs) in a distant galaxy. A paper on the arXiv preprint server on October 30 reports the discovery of 22 repeating bursts from this source, designated FRB 20240209A.
FRBs are short intense bursts of radio emission lasting milliseconds. Their nature remains unknown, but scientists suggest they may originate from various cosmic phenomena such as magnetars. CHIME, a specialized radio telescope for the study of hydrogen, was the instrument that recorded the largest number of FRBs. And now it has discovered a new source that is in the vicinity of an elliptical galaxy with a redshift of 0.138.
In February 2024, the CHIME telescope detected the first signals from FRB 20240209A, and by the end of July, the number of recurring bursts had reached 22. The researchers note that these bursts are mostly narrowband, and their frequency is about 20 times per hour, which is 10,000 times much higher than the original upper limit.
The analysis reveals that FRB 20240209A is associated with a massive and calm elliptical galaxy, the first time that the source of a repeating FRB has been associated with an inactive galaxy. Moreover, FRB 20240209A has a significant physical offset from the center of its galaxy, about 130 thousand light-years, which is the largest known offset for this type of source.
Scientists offer several possible explanations for this large offset. The FRB source may have been pushed out of the galaxy’s central regions or originated in a cluster of stars that is located at the galaxy’s outskirts. The researchers believe the most believable scenario is that the source is in a globular star cluster that formed far from the center of the galaxy.
Thus, the discovery of FRB 20240209A provides new data to investigate the nature of fast radio bursts and the possibility of their occurrence in different types of galaxies and regions of space.
We previously reported on how the largest space puzzle played the melody of a xylophone.
Provided by phys.org
