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Scientists reveal source of bizarre radio signal that travelled 200,000,000 miles to reach earth

Home> Technology> Space

Published 11:21 7 Jan 2025 GMT

Scientists reveal source of bizarre radio signal that travelled 200,000,000 miles to reach earth

The origin of a radio burst first discovered in 2022 has been identified by a team of physicists

Poppy Bilderbeck

Poppy Bilderbeck

The origin of a fast radio burst from space has been narrowed down by astronomers with 'an amazing range of scales involved'.

Researches from Massachusetts Institute of Technology have published a new study which reveals the source of a specific radio burst that has been detected from a galaxy roughly 200 million light-years away.

Fast radio bursts

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) were first discovered by scientists in 2007, Science Alert reports.

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The bursts of radio emission lasting just milliseconds are extremely powerful and only burst once - which has made them difficult to study.

However, in 2022, a team of astronomers honed in on a radio burst named FRB 20221022A, which was detected from a galaxy roughly 200 million light-years away - with the signal lasting about two milliseconds.

And scientists have since been able to pinpoint the source of the radio waves, a new study published in Nature - titled Magnetospheric origin of a fast radio burst constrained using scintillation - weighing up two options in particular.

Fast radio bursts were first discovered in 2007 (Getty Stock Images/ Mark Garlick)
Fast radio bursts were first discovered in 2007 (Getty Stock Images/ Mark Garlick)

The radio burst's origin

The team studied something called scintillation in a bid to trace FRB 20221022A back to its source.

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Scintillation - also known as twinkling - is the 'generic term for rapid variations in apparent position, brightness, or color of a distant luminous object viewed through the atmosphere', NASA's Thesaurus explains, and the study found the changes in the FRB's brightness means the radio burst occurred close to its source.

Another study - titled A pulsar-like polarization angle swing from a nearby fast radio burst - analyzed the shape of the radio waves and found it showed 'a notable approximately 130° PA rotation over its about 2.5 ms burst duration, resembling the characteristic S-shaped evolution seen in many pulsars and some radio magnetars', which supported the theory that the radio wave is from a place with a strong magnetic field and somewhere which is rotating too.

In the new study, the team also confirmed some of the scintillation was being caused by gas within the FRB's host galaxy and they were subsequently able to figure out an area small as 10,000 kilometers wide where the burst originated from.

Given the pattern's echoes with previous observations of highly magnetized, rotating neutron stars, scientists ultimately concluded FRB 20221022A had likely exploded from close to a rotating neutron star, bursting within its magnetosphere.

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A spinning neutron star (Getty Stock Images/ Mark Garlick/ Science Photo Library)
A spinning neutron star (Getty Stock Images/ Mark Garlick/ Science Photo Library)

What it means

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) physicist Kiyoshi Masui said: "Zooming in to a 10,000-kilometer region, from a distance of 200 million light years, is like being able to measure the width of a DNA helix, which is about two nanometers wide, on the surface of the moon.

"There’s an amazing range of scales involved."

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While noting atoms 'can't exist' around 'highly magnetic neutron stars, also known as magnetars' given they'd 'just get torn apart by the magnetic fields,' Masui explains the 'exciting thing here is' the study found 'that the energy stored in those magnetic fields, close to the source, is twisting and reconfiguring such that it can be released as radio waves that we can see halfway across the Universe'.

Featured Image Credit: Getty Images/ARTUR PLAWGO/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images/DANNY HU

Topics: Space, Technology, Science, US News, World News

Poppy Bilderbeck
Poppy Bilderbeck

Poppy Bilderbeck is a Senior Journalist at LADbible Group. She graduated from The University of Manchester in 2021 with a First in English Literature and Drama, where alongside her studies she was Editor-in-Chief of The Tab Manchester. Poppy is most comfortable when chatting about all things mental health, is proving a drama degree is far from useless by watching and reviewing as many TV shows and films as possible and is such a crisp fanatic the office has been forced to release them in batches.

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