America's democracy on the brink, Brexit looming, climate crashing... when better to get the first fast radio burst from our own galaxy?
- Reference: 1604644329
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/11/06/milky_way_frb/
- Source link:
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are usually extragalactic radio signals lasting just a fraction of a second, and have baffled scientists since they were discovered in 2007. Now multiple telescopes have detected the first FRB within our Milky Way galaxy.
The close proximity of the outburst made it easy to track down its source, and two separate teams of astrophysicists fingered a magnetar codenamed SGR 1935+2154.
[1]
A NASA Goddard illustration of the fast radio burst
“There’s this great mystery as to what would produce these great outbursts of energy, which until now we’ve seen coming from halfway across the universe,” [2]said Kiyoshi Masui, co-author of one of the studies [3]published in Nature this week about the FRB, and an assistant professor of physics at MIT.
Astroboffins agog after spotting the first repeating fast radio burst that pings every 16 days from another galaxy [4]READ MORE
“This is the first time we’ve been able to tie one of these exotic fast radio bursts to a single astrophysical object.”
In late April, SGR 1935 started behaving oddly. It launched a firework display of X-rays, repeatedly shooting out beams over hours. The event was captured by various spacecraft and instruments in orbit, including NASA’s Swift satellite, the Fermi Gamma-ray telescope, and the Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer installed atop the International Space Station.
Around 13 hours after the storm died down, SGR let off another pulse of X-ray energy along with a fast radio burst that lasted just a thousandth of a second. Observatories, such as the ground-based [5]Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) and STARE2, an array of radio antennas spread across the US West Coast, detected the short blip.
Here’s a handy video from NASA explaining the whole shebang:
[6]Youtube Video
“The radio burst was far brighter than anything we had seen before, so we immediately knew it was an exciting event,” [7]said Paul Scholz, an astronomy and astrophysics researcher at the University of Toronto, who is part of the CHIME/FRB Collaboration.
A second study was also [8]published in Nature.
It’s been tricky to figure out the exact distance to SGR 1935. Located in the Vulpecula constellation, it’s estimated to be somewhere from 14,000 to 41,000 light-years away from our planet. If it is, indeed, in the closer range to Earth, scientists reckon the total X-ray energy generated during its outburst is equivalent to the same amount of energy produced by the Sun over a month.
“We've studied magnetars in our galaxy for decades, while FRBs are an extragalactic phenomenon whose origins have been a mystery. This event shows that the two phenomena are likely connected,” Scholz added.
Scientists have speculated that FRBs come from objects like magnetars for a while, though it’s possible that other previous measurements were generated by things like supermassive black holes. Both teams will continue picking apart the signals from SGR 1935 in an attempt to crack the puzzle of physics behind the creation of FRBs.
“It’s been doing interesting things, and we’re trying to piece together what it all means. We’ve got our eyes open for other magnetars, but the big thing now is to study this one source and really drill down to see what it tells us about how FRBs are made,” Masui concluded. ®
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[1] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/11/05/frb.jpg
[2] https://news.mit.edu/2020/ultrabright-radio-flashes-detection-1104
[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2863-y
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2020/02/12/fast_radio_burst/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2019/01/10/fast_radio_burst/
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiGj-gtygDU
[7] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/nasa-missions-help-pinpoint-the-source-of-a-unique-x-ray-radio-burst
[8] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2872-x
[9] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re:
Even a neutron star fails to be the densest thing in the news this week!
Not even close
It's not even a close race, even with the all voter suppression, all the Republican dirty tricks, Trump still lost. You can tell they didn't suppress enough votes or do enough voter suppression tricks. If they hadn't closed all those polling stations, stops mail-in ballots, blocked late-arriving mail-in ballots and got DeJoy to make ballots arrive late in Democrat districts, closed ballot drop stations, challenged drive in voting, tried to suppress millions of votes by 40+ lawsuits seeking to block those people's votes from being counted....
Without the tricks, Trump would have lost by an insane amount.
Putin has passed a law giving himself immunity from prosecution, and is proposing to 'step down due to illness'. But his illness is 'sudden onset coup flop', and he never steps down, he just pretends to step down. If Putin knows they lost, then so does Trump, and it means they can't figure out anything they can cook up to turn this loss into a win.
Don Jr and Hannity (i.e. Trump's mouth piece) are demanding a do-over. So they can suppress more of the votes counted to turn a loss into a win next time.
It's how it works, Putin puppets win by just over 50% to make it look plausible. They do *just*enough* election rigging and no more. If they miscalculate the amount, then they lose. Putin cancels the election claiming 'fraud', as Trump is trying to do here.
Republicans are noticeably silent as they cannot figure out how to make this into a win.
Kavanaugh really cannot figure out how to turn "we the people" into "we the people, but not you, you you or you".
The military need to side with the people. The police need to side with the people. The government needs to side with the people. Democracy prevails, the people win.
Unite around the mutual hatred for the attacks Russia did to democracy. Republicans can redeem themselves by a sudden found patriotic loyalty that despises all those lies that those damn Russians pumped into Fox News. Even if they were part of the lies.
Trump has lost. Republicans need to follow Putin's lead, one last time, and abandon Trump.
Earthling, your petty arguments are a distraction
While you bicker over votes, the invasion of your galaxy has already started...
Re: Earthling, your petty arguments are a distraction
yes, come and sell us FTL travel !!!! :D :D
Re: Not even close
I'm on your side. But, please, can't we keep politics out of the comments on science articles? I read the science articles because I want to think about science not about the shittiness which is engulfing the world. There are many, many places where that discussion can be had, and many, many things we should be doing to fight the slide into something horrible. But ... not here, please?
Re: Not even close
So don't read what I said. I get that you wish others to not be able to read it.
Article headline author clearly wants to talk about what's happening in the USA but is stuck with another EM burst article. Do you also want them gone too?
Mistake in article?
The article says "If it is, indeed, in the closer range to Earth,". Should that be "further range from Earth"? The further away the source is, the more total energy is needed to produced the observed brightness here. Given the uncertainty in the distance is about x3, the uncertainty in the total energy output is approximately x10, which is somewhat higher than most astronomers like (though cosmologists call it "very precise").
Oh...
When the next one comes from the vicinity of the far side of the moon then we know we'll be in trouble...
arXiv preprints
It looks as if there are preprints of the two Nature papers [1]here and [2]here . Obviously these may differ from the final versions, but they are not paywalled.
[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.10324
[2] https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.10828
In these days of the coming apocalypse, nothing like a neutron star to take our minds of the horrors.