{"id":27317,"date":"2021-12-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-16T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/?p=27317&preview=true&preview_id=27317"},"modified":"2022-01-11T15:54:43","modified_gmt":"2022-01-11T15:54:43","slug":"cutting-edge-chris-lintott-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/2021\/12\/16\/cutting-edge-chris-lintott-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Cutting edge: Chris Lintott"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Finding a home for fast radio bursts<\/span><\/h4>\n\n

Tracing the source of one of the bursts solves part of the mystery of these short, energetic events<\/p>\n\n

\"\"
Scientists are still unravelling the mysteries of fast radio bursts<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

Since their discovery in 2007, fast radio bursts (FRBs) have continued to fascinate, not least because they have avoided simple explanations. These sudden and intense flashes of radio waves, detected by telescopes around the world, often seem to be one-off events, suggesting some sort of catastrophic explosion such as an extreme supernova might be responsible. But some repeat, occasionally on a regular pattern.<\/p>\n\n

The fact that these things are fast, lasting just milliseconds, and bright, emitting a huge amount of energy, makes most people think they\u2019re related to compact objects, such as neutron stars or black holes (colliding neutron stars seem to fit most of the observed properties of at least some bursts). Other suggestions \u2013 from active galactic nuclei to misbehaving pulsars to exotic behaviour in string theory \u2013 abound in the scientific literature.<\/p>\n\n

One of the problems is that although there\u2019s good evidence to suggest most FRBs are distant, identifying their host galaxies is hard. That\u2019s why I\u2019m excited by this month\u2019s paper, which takes a close look at one burst and manages to find its home.<\/p>\n\n

Closer than you might think<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n

FRB 20181030A has been detected nine times by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) telescope, the world\u2019s premiere FRB-hunting instrument. Because it has been observed so often, the burst can be traced to a much smaller region of the sky than normal \u2013a region that contains seven known galaxies; one of which, NGC 3252, is much closer than the others. The odds of having a system that close \u2013 just 65 million lightyears away from the Milky Way (a stroll to the shops in galactic terms) \u2013 to where the FRB occurred by chance is estimated to be around 1 in 400, making this one of the closest FRBs to have a host galaxy determined.<\/p>\n\n

In fact, two other repeating bursts have been found closer than this one and combining the three allows us to estimate how common they really are. It turns out that by doing so we can rule out some of the most popular potential culprits. People have blamed FRBs on a form of rapidly spinning, magnetically active neutron star known as a magnetar, but there aren\u2019t nearly enough of these to account for even the three nearby examples we see.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

On the other hand, all of the five repeating FRBs whose host galaxies have been traced live in spiral systems. This might be an excellent clue: spirals tend to host supernovae caused by the collapse of massive stars (except that one of the five is from a gl obular cluster in M81, a place where there should be no such events). What\u2019s more, all of the five are (relatively) low-energy events \u2013 much less spectacular than the cosmic beacons seen in the more distant Universe \u2013 so there may be more than one mechanism at work.<\/p>\n\n

FRBs are a proper cosmic mystery, with astronomical detectives still very much on the trail of whatever is causing these spectacular events. Identifying the host of this particular burst is a big step forward, but there\u2019s a lot more still to discover.<\/p>\n\n

\n\n
\n
\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n

Prof Chris Lintott is an astrophysicist and co-presenter on The Sky at Night. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was reading\u2026 A Local Universe Host for the Repeating Fast Radio Burst FRB 20181030A<\/em> by M. Bhardwaj et al. Read it online at:<\/strong> ui.adsabs.harvard.edu\/abs\/2021ApJ\u2026919L..24B\/abstract<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tracing the source of one of the bursts solves part of the mystery of these short, energetic events<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5420,"featured_media":27322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ub_ctt_via":"","purple_page_number":"","purple_custom_meta_purple_page_number":"","purple_seq_number":"","purple_custom_meta_purple_seq_number":"","purple_source_article":"","purple_custom_meta_purple_source_article":"","purple_source_issue":"","purple_custom_meta_purple_source_issue":"January-2022","purple_external_id":"","purple_custom_meta_purple_external_id":"January-2022-a49d6469-2524-4449-841f-81216d6eebc8","purple_issue_code":"","purple_custom_meta_purple_issue_code":"|0000086548||","purple_android_product":"","purple_custom_meta_purple_android_product":"com.im.skyatnight.200","purple_ios_product":"","purple_custom_meta_purple_ios_product":"com.im.skyatnight.200","purple_web_product":"","purple_custom_meta_purple_web_product":"","purple_publication_id":"","purple_migrated":"","kt_blocks_editor_width":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2021\/12\/V86178W6836I6PY7A3VMEZH6DI60-1.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"maya.hack@immediate.co.uk","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/author\/maya-hackimmediate-co-uk\/"},"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"3","apple_news_title":""},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2021\/12\/V86178W6836I6PY7A3VMEZH6DI60-1.jpg",2048,1598,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2021\/12\/V86178W6836I6PY7A3VMEZH6DI60-1-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2021\/12\/V86178W6836I6PY7A3VMEZH6DI60-1-300x234.jpg",300,234,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2021\/12\/V86178W6836I6PY7A3VMEZH6DI60-1-768x599.jpg",768,599,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2021\/12\/V86178W6836I6PY7A3VMEZH6DI60-1-1024x799.jpg",800,624,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2021\/12\/V86178W6836I6PY7A3VMEZH6DI60-1-1536x1199.jpg",1536,1199,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2021\/12\/V86178W6836I6PY7A3VMEZH6DI60-1.jpg",2048,1598,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"maya.hack@immediate.co.uk","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/author\/maya-hackimmediate-co-uk\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Tracing the source of one of the bursts solves part of the mystery of these short, energetic events","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27317"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5420"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27317"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27685,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27317\/revisions\/27685"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}