Scientists using China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope have captured the evolutionary process of mysterious flashes, shedding light on their origins.
An international research team has discovered compelling evidence that some fast radio bursts, fleeting yet powerful cosmic phenomena, originate from compact star binaries. This groundbreaking finding, published in the journal Science, is based on in-depth observations of a repeating fast radio burst known as FRB 20220529.
These bursts, akin to super lightning in the universe, are incredibly bright and short-lived, lasting only a few thousandths of a second while releasing the energy equivalent of the sun's output over a week. Since their discovery in 2007, astronomers have detected thousands of these bursts, yet their exact cause remained elusive.
The study, led by astronomers from the Purple Mountain Observatory, utilized the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, FAST, to monitor FRB 20220529 for over two years. A significant observation was a sudden and dramatic change in the environment around the source, indicating a dense cloud of magnetized plasma passing between the burst source and Earth.
This phenomenon, akin to a solar coronal mass ejection, temporarily altered the radio signal. The study provided the strongest direct evidence that some repeating fast radio bursts originate in compact binary systems, where a compact object like a neutron star or magnetar orbits a companion star.
The discovery highlights the power of FAST in making these monitoring observations and continues to advance our understanding of these enigmatic cosmic phenomena.
