Detection positions of the new CHIME/FRB repeating FRB sources. Credit: Andersen et al., 2019.

Using the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) telescope, astronomers have identified eight new repeating fast radio burst (FRB) sources. The finding, reported in a paper published August 9 on arXiv.org, could shed new light on the origin and nature of these mysterious phenomena.

FRBs are intense bursts of radio emission lasting milliseconds and showcasing characteristic dispersion sweep of radio pulsars. The physical nature of these bursts is yet unknown, and astronomers consider a variety of explanations ranging from synchrotron maser emission from young magnetars in supernova remnants to cosmic string cusps.

The first FRB was discovered in 2007. Known as the Lorimer Burst, the bursts was a singular event such as a supernova. Five years later, the first repeating FRB was detected. Named FRB 121102, the source exhibits complex burst morphology, sub-burst downward frequency drifts, and also complex pulse phenomenology.

Although dozens of FRBs have been identified to date, only two of them were found to repeat their signals. These repeaters could be the key to resolving the mysteries of FRBs as astronomers anticipating the upcoming bursts can prepare extensive follow-up observational campaigns aimed at investigating such flashes in detail.

Now, a team of astronomers led by Bridget C. Andersen of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, reports the detection of eight new FRB repeaters, which could mean a breakthrough in studies of these flaring events.

"We report on the discovery of eight repeating FRB sources found using the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) telescope," the astronomers wrote in the paper.

The newly identified FRBs have dispersion measures ranging from 103.5 to 1,281 parsecs/cm3. For the two FRBs with low dispersion measure, the astronomers cannot exclude the possibility that they are galactic halo objects. Hence, multi-wavelength follow-up observations for these sources are proposed in order to put constraints on their location.

The study found that one of the eight new FRBs has a rotation measure of -115 rad/m2—much lower than that observed for FRB 121102. This allowed the astronomers to draw initial conclusions about the general properties of FRBs.

"This, and the absence of a comparably luminous persistent radio source in Sources 1 and 2 uncertainty regions, suggest not all repeaters share the environmental properties of FRB 121102," the paper reads.

Moreover, the researchers found that the repeating FRBs reported in the study generally have dispersion measures typical for the non-repeating FRBs so far identified with CHIME. However, they do show evidence of having larger burst widths than non-repeating bursts. This, according to the authors of the paper, could suggest different emission mechanisms in repeating and non-repeating sources.

The astronomers also found complex morphologies and downward-drifting sub-bursts in some of the eight new FRBs, what could indicate that such phenomenology is not necessarily observed in repeating sources.

In concluding remarks, the scientists underlined the significance of their discovery, noting that it represents an important progress in the ongoing hunt for FRBs. They added that the new sources present a great opportunity for follow-up studies, what could disentangle the mysterious nature of FRBs.

Explore further Canada's CHIME telescope detects second repeating fast radio burst

More information: B. C. Andersen et al. CHIME/FRB Detection of Eight New Repeating Fast Radio Burst Sources,arXiv:1908.03507v2 [astro-ph.HE]: B. C. Andersen et al. CHIME/FRB Detection of Eight New Repeating Fast Radio Burst Sources,arXiv:1908.03507v2 [astro-ph.HE]: arxiv.org/abs/1908.03507

© 2019 Science X Network </s> Astronomers identified eight new repeating fast radio burst (FRB) sources using Canada’s CHIME telescope.

The findings, led by Bridget Andersen of McGill University, could mean a breakthrough in the study of these cosmic events.

Inaugurated in 2017, the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) interferometric radio telescope’s primary goals are to improve knowledge of dark energy and detect extragalactic FRBs—brief, bright flashes of radio waves that last a few milliseconds.

The astrophysical mysteries are thought to originate from far outside our Milky Way, but their source remains unclear.

Since their discovery more than a decade ago, 60-plus bursts, each named for its date of detection, have been observed by five telescopes worldwide.

Scientists in January announced the second repeating fast radio burst ever recorded—one of a total 13 bursts detected over three weeks last summer, when CHIME was still in its pre-commissioning phase, running at only a fraction of its full capacity.

Repeaters—like the eight found by Andersen & Co.—could be the key to understanding the origin and nature of FRBs.

A fast radio burst leaves a distant galaxy and travels to Earth over billions of years, occasionally passing through a cloud of gas during its journey. Each time hot gas (or plasma) is encountered, the different wavelengths that make up a burst are slowed by different amounts.

Short (purple) radio waves, for example, arrive at a terrestrial telescope before long (red) ones.

This is known as dispersion.

The amount of dispersion informs how much matter the bursts have travelled through.

So far, repeating and non-repeating FRBs exhibit no difference in dispersion. They do, however, show evidence of having larger burst widths, suggesting different emission mechanisms in their sources.

Additional observations are needed before anyone can be sure from where (and who/what) these bursts are coming.
• None Study: Moon Is 100M Years Older Than We Thought
• None Rare Glimpse of Dying Star Confirms Prediction of Our Sun’s Fate </s> Astronomers are more than a little excited with the second ever detection of a repeating fast radio burst in deep space.

Nothing intrigues an astronomer more than a deep space mystery, and now a team of 13 researchers from Canada has stumbled on one of the biggest mysteries around.

The University of British Columbia team using the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) radio telescope revealed the discovery of a repeating fast radio burst (FRB) – whereby incredible amounts of energy are emitted for just a few milliseconds.

Containing the power of approximately 500m suns, the burst is highly significant because it is only the second repeating one ever discovered, the first being discovered by the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico in 2012.

Publishing its findings to two different papers in Nature (here and here), the team said this latest repeating FRB was one of 13 new bursts detected in the space of just two weeks in the summer of 2018. While most FRBs have been spotted at wavelengths of a few centimetres, the latest FRBs were detected at wavelengths of nearly a metre.

Unlike typical FRBs that come and go, the discovery of a repeating FRB is vital to increasing our understanding of them, as we are able to train our radio telescopes towards them to study them further. In the meantime, the researchers believe they may be able to find 1,000 more FRBs by the end of the year.

“[We now know] the sources can produce low-frequency radio waves and those low-frequency waves can escape their environment, and are not too scattered to be detected by the time they reach the Earth,” said Tom Landecker of the CHIME team. “That tells us something about the environments and the sources. We haven’t solved the problem, but it’s several more pieces in the puzzle.”

Because of their intensity in energy and mysterious origins, claims that they could be alien in design continue to be suggested. While quite unlikely, an intense beam of light reaching Earth from deep space sounds similar to a recent suggestion from MIT researchers regarding contact with distant civilisations.

The proposal put forward by James Clark was that if a high-powered laser up to 2MW in power was focused through a 30- to 45-metre telescope, it would produce a beam powerful enough to stand out from the intensity of the sun. </s> The CHIME radio telescope in Canada has spotted repeated fast radio bursts coming from the same region in space.

For the second time, astronomers have detected fast radio bursts (FRBs) coming from the exact same region in space outside of the Milky Way, which makes this the first time that they have spotted more than one set of these ubiquitous radio waves in the same location.

As ScienceAlert report, even when these fast radio bursts are detected, they are normally never seen again. And as scientists are still not certain what these FRBs really are, this makes things all the more baffling.

Astrophysicist Ingrid Stairs, from the University of British Columbia in Canada, explained that with the new discovery of a second set of repeated FRBs, scientists will have much more information at their disposal about this mysterious phenomenon.

“Until now, there was only one known repeating FRB. Knowing that there is another suggests that there could be more out there. And with more repeaters and more sources available for study, we may be able to understand these cosmic puzzles – where they’re from and what causes them.”

The fast radio bursts that were recently detected are officially called FRB 180814.J0422+73, and back in August 2018 these FRBs were observed repeating themselves six times, after they were first spotted by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment radio telescope (CHIME).

When looking at both new and repeated FRBs, the CHIME radio telescope has picked up an astonishing 13 new fast radio bursts and, even better, these observations were only test ones for this particular telescope. Which means that as it wasn’t operating at maximum capacity, in the future when it is, it is very possible that even more FRBs will be detected coming from the same area.

The first repeating fast radio bursts that astronomers originally picked up were found to emanate from FRB 122201, which is located three billion light-years away from Earth. However, this is pretty much all scientists know with much certainty about this signal right now.

FRB 180814.J0422+73, by contrast, is much closer to Earth, although these repeated signals were still found to be coming from another galaxy 1.5 billion light-years away from the Milky Way.

Physicist Arun Naidu, from McGill University in Canada, has noted, “Whatever the source of these radio waves is, it’s interesting to see how wide a range of frequencies it can produce. There are some models where intrinsically the source can’t produce anything below a certain frequency.”

Until CHIME or other radio telescopes pick up further FRBs, the two new studies which have just been published about the repeating fast radio bursts can be read here and here in Nature. </s> Scientists have detected the second repeating fast radio burst (FRB) ever recorded, a discovery that may help determine the origin of these mysterious signals which have been linked with advanced alien technology in the past.

Some scientists also believe that FRBs emanate from powerful astrophysical phenomena billions of light years away. However, the source of these signals, originating from far outside our Milky Way galaxy, are not well understood.

In 2017, Harvard scientists have speculated that these FRBs might be leakage from planet-sized transmitters powering interstellar probes in distant galaxies. They said that since a natural origin can not be identified, an artificial or alien origin can be contemplated.

“Whatever the source of these radio waves is, it’s interesting to see how wide a range of frequencies it can produce. There are some models where intrinsically the source can’t produce anything below a certain frequency,” said Arun Naidu of McGill University in Canada, who was part of the team that detected the signal.

The discovery of the extragalactic signal is among the first, eagerly awaited results from the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME), a radio telescope inaugurated in 2017.

“Until now, there was only one known repeating FRB. Knowing that there is another suggests that there could be more out there,” said Ingrid Stairs, a member of the CHIME team.

“And with more repeaters and more sources available for study, we may be able to understand these cosmic puzzles -- where they’re from and what causes them,” said Stairs, an astrophysicist at University of British Columbia in Canada.

The repeating FRB was one of a total of 13 bursts detected over a period of just three weeks during the summer of 2018, while CHIME was in its pre-commissioning phase and running at only a fraction of its full capacity.

Additional bursts from the repeating FRB were detected in following weeks by the telescope, which is located in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley.

Of the more than 60 FRBs observed to date, repeating bursts from a single source had been found only once before -- a discovery made by the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico in 2015.

The majority of the 13 FRBs detected showed signs of “scattering,” a phenomenon that reveals information about the environment surrounding a source of radio waves.

The amount of scattering observed by the CHIME team led them to conclude that the sources of FRBs are powerful astrophysical objects more likely to be in locations with special characteristics.

“That could mean in some sort of dense clump like a supernova remnant,” said Cherry Ng, an astronomer at the University of Toronto in Canada. “Or near the central black hole in a galaxy. But it has to be in some special place to give us all the scattering that we see,” said Ng.

Ever since FRBs were first detected, scientists have been piecing together the signals’ observed characteristics to come up with models that might explain the sources of the mysterious bursts and provide some idea of the environments in which they occur.

The detection by CHIME of FRBs at lower frequencies means some of these theories will need to be reconsidered. </s> The discovery of the extragalactic signal is among the first, eagerly awaited results from the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME), a revolutionary radio telescope inaugurated in late 2017 by a collaboration of scientists from the University of British Columbia, McGill University, University of Toronto, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and the National Research Council of Canada.

In a resounding endorsement of the novel telescope's capabilities, the repeating FRB was one of a total of 13 bursts detected over a period of just three weeks during the summer of 2018, while CHIME was in its pre-commissioning phase and running at only a fraction of its full capacity. Additional bursts from the repeating FRB were detected in following weeks by the telescope, which is located in British Columbia's Okanagan Valley.

Discovery of second repeating FRB suggests more exist

Of the more than 60 FRBs observed to date, repeating bursts from a single source had been found only once before—a discovery made by the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico in 2015.

"Until now, there was only one known repeating FRB. Knowing that there is another suggests that there could be more out there. And with more repeaters and more sources available for study, we may be able to understand these cosmic puzzles—where they're from and what causes them," said Ingrid Stairs, a member of the CHIME team and an astrophysicist at UBC.

Before CHIME began to gather data, some scientists wondered if the range of radio frequencies the telescope had been designed to detect would be too low to pick up fast radio bursts. Most of the FRBs previously detected had been found at frequencies near 1400 MHz, well above the Canadian telescope's range of 400 MHz to 800 MHz.

The CHIME team's results—published January 9 in two papers in Nature and presented the same day at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle—settled these doubts, with the majority of the 13 bursts being recorded well down to the lowest frequencies in CHIME's range. In some of the 13 cases, the signal at the lower end of the band was so bright that it seems likely other FRBs will be detected at frequencies even lower than CHIME's minimum of 400 MHz.

FRB sources likely to be in 'special places' within galaxies

The majority of the 13 FRBs detected showed signs of "scattering," a phenomenon that reveals information about the environment surrounding a source of radio waves. The amount of scattering observed by the CHIME team led them to conclude that the sources of FRBs are powerful astrophysical objects more likely to be in locations with special characteristics.

"That could mean in some sort of dense clump like a supernova remnant," says team member Cherry Ng, an astronomer at the University of Toronto. "Or near the central black hole in a galaxy. But it has to be in some special place to give us all the scattering that we see."

A new clue to the puzzle

Ever since FRBs were first detected, scientists have been piecing together the signals' observed characteristics to come up with models that might explain the sources of the mysterious bursts and provide some idea of the environments in which they occur. The detection by CHIME of FRBs at lower frequencies means some of these theories will need to be reconsidered.

"Whatever the source of these radio waves is, it's interesting to see how wide a range of frequencies it can produce. There are some models where intrinsically the source can't produce anything below a certain frequency," says team member Arun Naidu of McGill University.

"[We now know] the sources can produce low-frequency radio waves and those low-frequency waves can escape their environment, and are not too scattered to be detected by the time they reach the Earth. That tells us something about the environments and the sources. We haven't solved the problem, but it's several more pieces in the puzzle," says Tom Landecker, a CHIME team member from the National Research Council of Canada.

Explore further: New Canadian radio telescope is detecting fast radio bursts

More information: Observations of fast radio bursts at frequencies down to 400 megahertz, Nature (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0867-7 </s> Scientists suddenly have a whole lot more data on one of the strangest and most recent mysteries in the cosmos, so-called fast radio bursts (FRBs). First discovered in 2007, these fleeting blasts of radio waves originate thousands, millions or even billions of light years from Earth.

FRBs have influenced the design of new radio telescopes like the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME). And now a team of Canadian and American researchers using CHIME has reported a major new set of FRB detections that could fine-tune our understanding of where these enigmatic signals come from and what produces them.

The group says it's discovered eight new FRBs that repeat.

"Repeating FRBs are highly valuable from an observational perspective since their repeating nature make them better candidates for localizing their host galaxies and multi-wavelength follow-up observations that can help determine if FRBs emit at wavelengths other than radio," said Ryan McKinven, one of the researchers who is based at the University of Toronto and co-author of a paper about the FRBs.

Those follow-up observations could provide details about the origins of the strange bursts, he added. A larger sample size of repeating FRBs to study could also help scientists answer one of the obvious questions about non-repeating FRBs: Could they actually be repeating FRBs that just haven't been recorded as repeating yet?

While dozens of FRBs have been detected and cataloged over the past 12 years, few of those deep space signals had been known to repeat themselves. Two have been documented so far in published, peer-reviewed journals. Two others -- one via a Russian radio telescope, the other via Australia -- have been reported but not yet reviewed.

So with this batch of bursts, the number of reported repeaters has tripled -- from four to 12.

The team laid out its findings in a draft paper that's been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal and was posted this month on the Arxiv pre-print site.

"Discovering different types of FRBs at an unexpected rate, we will soon open new windows into understanding the cosmological origin of these high-energy astrophysical phenomena," said co-author Masoud Rafiei-Ravandi of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

In addition to the sheer number of repeating FRBs discovered in one haul, one of the newfound repeaters appears to be much closer to Earth than the handful of fast radio bursts that have been traced back to a source galaxy. So far, traceable FRBs seem to come from sources on the other side of the universe -- we're talking billions of light years away.

However, in the new paper, the authors suggest that one of the repeating FRBs could actually originate near the edge of our own Milky Way galaxy but caution that more study is needed to better localize the signal.

"Knowing that we are observing every patch of sky visible to CHIME once every day, it was only a matter of time before we detected a very nearby source," co-author Pragya Chawla of McGill University said.

Studying relatively nearby FRBs will hopefully allow scientists to get a better idea of just what the heck is throwing off these signals, which could be anything from far-fetched notions like alien starships to the less fantastic but literally more powerful sources, like neutron stars. </s> Mysterious repeating energy bursts from deep space that some experts have suggested could be evidence of advanced aliens have been detected for only the second time in history.

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are millisecond-long flashes of radio waves whose origin is unknown.

Most scientists believe they are generated by powerful astrophysical phenomena such as black holes or super-dense neutron stars. But a few have suggested more outlandish theories.

Prof Avi Loeb, from the Harvard-Smithsonian centre for astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, believes they could be evidence of incredibly advanced alien technology.

FRBs were first detected accidentally in 2007, when a burst was spotted in radio astronomy data that had been collected in 2001.

The new discovery reported in the journal Nature was made by a Canadian-led team of astronomers on the hunt for FRBs.

Over a period of three weeks last summer, the team detected 13 of the flashes using a new type of radio telescope, the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (Chime).

One of the FRBs was repeating. Of more than 60 FRBs detected to date, such repeating bursts have only been picked up once before, by the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico in 2015.

Where the FRBs come from is not known, although they are thought to emanate from sources billions of light years away outside our galaxy, the Milky Way.

Chime astrophysicist Dr Ingrid Stairs, from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, said: “Until now, there was only one known repeating FRB. Knowing that there is another suggests that there could be more out there.

“And with more repeaters and more sources available for study, we may be able to understand these cosmic puzzles – where they’re from and what causes them.”

Most of the 13 FRBs showed signs of “scattering” that suggest their sources could be powerful astrophysical objects in locations with special characteristics, the scientists said.

Team member Dr Cherry Ng, from the University of Toronto, said: “That could mean in some sort of dense clump like a supernova [exploding star] remnant. Or near the central black hole in a galaxy. But it has to be in some special place to give us all the scattering that we see.”

The new FRBs are are also at unusually low radio frequencies. Most previously detected FRBs have had frequencies of around 1,400 megahertz (MHz), but the new ones fell within a range below 800 MHz.

In 2017 Loeb and Harvard colleague Manasvi Lingam proposed that FRBs could be leakage from planet-sized alien transmitters.

Rather than being designed for communication, they would more likely be used to propel giant space ships powered by light sails.

A light sail works by bouncing light, or in this case radio beams, off a huge reflective sheet to provide forward thrust.

Loeb, who discusses the idea in a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, said: “An artificial origin is worth contemplating and checking.” </s> Astronomers in Canada have detected a mysterious volley of radio waves from far outside our galaxy, according to two studies published Wednesday in Nature.

What corner of the universe these powerful waves come from and the forces that produced them remain unknown.

The so-called repeating fast radio bursts were identified during the trial run last summer of a built-for-purpose telescope running at only a fraction of its capacity.

Known by its acronym CHIME, the world’s most powerful radio telescope, spread across an area as big as a football pitch, is poised to detect many more of the enigmatic pulses now that it is fully operational.

“At the end of the year, we may have found 1,000 bursts,” said Deborah Good, a PhD student at the University of British Columbia and one of 50 scientists from five institutions involved in the research.

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) flash only for a micro-instant, but can emit as much energy as the sun does in 10,000 years.

Exactly what causes these high-energy surges of long waves at the far end of the electromagnetic spectrum remains the subject of intense debate.

More than 60 bursts have been cataloged since 2007, but only one other, observed in 2012 at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, was a repeater.

“FRBs, it seems, are likely generated in dense, turbulent regions of host galaxies,” Shriharsh Tendulkar, a corresponding author for both studies and an astronomer at McGill University, told AFP.

Cosmic convulsions created by the turbulent gas clouds that give rise to stars, or stellar explosions such a supernovae, are both possible incubators.

“The fact that the bursts are repeated rules out any cataclysmic models in which the source is destroyed while generating the burst,” Tendulkar added.

“An FRB emitted from a merger of two neutron stars, or a neutron star and a black hole, for example, cannot repeat.”

It is not yet clear whether the breeding grounds of repeating bursts are different from those that produce only a single radio pulse.

Significantly, the 2012 and 2018 “repeaters” have strikingly similar properties.

CHIME (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) also spotted a dozen single burst radio waves, but with an unusual profile.

Most FRBs spotted so far have wavelengths of a few centimeters, but these had intervals of nearly a meter, opening up a whole new line of inquiry for astronomers.

Could these enigmatic radio pulses point to intelligence elsewhere in the Universe? Might they be messages in a bottle?

“As a scientist I can’t rule it out 100 percent. But intelligent life is not on the minds of any astronomer as a source of these FRBs.”

Constructed in British Columbia, CHIME is composed of four, 100-meter long half-pipe cylinders of metal mesh, which reconstruct images of the sky by processing the radio signals recorded by more than a thousand antennas.

“This signal processing system is the largest of any telescope on Earth,” the researchers said in a communique.

The other institutions with leading roles are the University of Toronto, the National Research Council of Canada, and the Perimeter Institute.
Astronomers led by a team from McGill University in Montreal announce the detection of eight new repeating fast radio bursts (FRBs) using the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) radio telescope. The astronomers report they also found complex morphologies and downward-drifting sub-bursts in some of the eight new FRBs.