Fast Radio Bursts are one of space’s great mysteries. Discovered for the first time only in 2007, they are massively powerful bursts of radio waves that last for just a fraction of a second. The vast majority of these signals occur once, and then never happen again – making them especially hard to track and study. Scientists know that whatever produces the FRBs must be a highly energetic event, but without knowing where these busts come from, the actual creation of these brilliant flashes remains unknown.
In 2017, researchers tracked one burst, called FRB 121102, to a tiny yet active galaxy. But that was an even rarer repeating FRB, which gave scientists multiple tries at pinning down its location.
Now, astronomers using Australia’s Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder radio observatory (ASKAP) have managed to zero in on the location of a non-repeating burst, FRB 180924. Finding it was a much tougher challenge. They discovered that the FRB came from a quiet galaxy entirely unlike that of the repeating burst, making the finding both exciting and unexpected. The research, led by Keith Bannister from Australia’s Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), was published Thursday in the journal Science.
