Sometimes you can’t see the answer, even though it’s sitting right in front of you.
Such is the case with Fast Radio Bursts, a phenomenon whereby new pattern discovery algorithms are used to analyze old, archival data collected from radio telescopes to uncover information about our universe.
January 2019 | Fixed Media, Stereo
FRBs are short, powerful signal bursts and since their discovery in 2007, no one has been able to determine exactly what causes them.
Some think they’re the result of interactions between large extragalactic objects. Others imagine they point to the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. And until recently, they were thought to occur in single instances — as one-offs.
But since 2012, one particular pattern known as FRB 121102 has been found to be repeating itself (based on dispersion measures and sky position of the original data) and in 2017 researchers pinpointed it’s location.
It seems FRB 121102 is coming from a dwarf galaxy about three billion light-years from Earth…
