A super powerful radio wave blast from space is being probed by researchers who are trying to determine why that spot in space is the only known location for repeated bursts, Space.com reported Wednesday.
Researchers believe the bursts may come from a dense stellar core called a neutron star close to a powerful magnetic field, one that could possibly be found near a massive black hole, Space.com wrote.
The website said fast radio bursts are intense pulses of radio waves lasting only milliseconds, but can give off more energy in a fraction of a second than the sun does in hours, days or weeks. While researchers have identified roughly 20 fast radio bursts during the past 10 years, they believe the flashes happen about 10,000 times a day across the sky, Space.com stated.
Last week, astronomers announced in three studies that they believe they pinpointed the source of the radio waves from deep outside the Milky Way galaxy, according to The Verge. Scientists believe that the blasts come from a dwarf galaxy located some 3 billion light years from Earth.
Shami Chatterjee, an astronomer from Cornell University, found a burst labeled FRB 121102 where it repeated, suggesting multiple radio bursts coming from the same location in the sky, making it easier to catch, The Verge wrote.
In a statement released by Cornell, Chatterjee said that until a few years ago, fast radio bursts were a new phenomenon with no conventional explanation.
"New phenomena get scientists excited," Chatterjee said in the Cornell statement. "It's like fresh powder snow on a ski slope."
The Cornell statement said that data about the blast was gathered from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and confirmed by Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia.
"It's remote sensing from three billion light years away," said James Cordes, a professor of astronomy at Cornell in the university's statement. "These new measurements allow us to be much more specific about the immediate surroundings of the source."
The statement said that the FRB 121102 radio bursts twisted to such an extreme – more than 500 times greater any other fast radio burst observed to date – that astronomers believe it must pass through a high magnetic field in dense plasma.
Because of that, scientists believe that the youthful source of the FRB 121102 bursts may be close to a massive black hole in its own galaxy or a young neutron star cradled within a powerful nebula or a supernova remnant, the Cornell statement added.
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