A mysterious burst of fast, cosmic radio waves has been traced to a galaxy about 3.6 billion light-years from Earth.

The significant discovery was made by an Australian-led international team of scientists using three of the world’s largest telescopes, The Independent reported. The findings were published Thursday in the journal Science.

Scientists first discovered fast radio bursts, known as FRBs, in 2007, said lead study author Keith Bannister, of Australia’s national science agency.

The source of a repeating fast radio burst was tracked in 2017, CNN reported. A single FRB hadn’t been tracked to its source until now.

Scientists tracked the single radio burst, named FRB 180924, to a galaxy about the same size as our own, 3.6 billion light-years away. It was discovered by the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder radio telescope, or ASKAP, in Western Australia.

“If we were to stand on the Moon and look down at the Earth with this precision, we would be able to tell not only which city the burst came from, but which postcode and even which city block,” Bannister said.

The repeating burst detected in 2017 came from a small galaxy full of forming stars. The single burst came from a large galaxy with little star formation.

"This suggests that fast radio bursts can be produced in a variety of environments, or that seemingly one-off bursts detected so far by ASKAP are generated by a different mechanism to the repeater," said Adam Deller, an author of the study and an associate professor at the Swinburne University of Technology's Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing.

The question of what causes the bursts still remains. But tracking their source brings scientists one step closer to understanding them. </s> Three and a half billion years ago, a mysterious object on the edge of a distant galaxy spewed forth an intensely bright, vanishingly brief burst of radio energy that shot across the universe.

That pulse of energy — known to its fans in the astronomy community as a fast radio burst (FRB) — passed through a wilderness of gas, dust and empty space on its multi-billion-year journey, slowly stretching and changing color as it moved. Then, for less than a millisecond in 2018, that burst zapped past a special telescope in Earth's Australian outback, giving scientists a rare opportunity to shake hands with one of the most mysterious forms of energy in the universe.

It's the first time that astronomers have successfully tracked a one-off FRB back to its origins across space and time, according to the authors of a study published today (June 27) in the journal Science. Understanding where FRBs come from allows scientists to probe the vast tracts of matter between their host galaxies and Earth, and maybe even locate undiscovered pockets of protons and neutrons thought to be lurking between galaxies.[The 12 Strangest Objects in the Universe]

"These bursts are altered by the matter they encounter in space," study co-author Jean-Pierre Macquart, a researcher at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) said in a statement. "Now we can pinpoint where they come from, we can use them to measure the amount of matter in intergalactic space."

Since the phenomenon was discovered in 2007, astronomers have observed about 85 FRBs and pinpointed the origins of only one other — a repeating flash that pulsed 9 times from a tiny, star-forming galaxy over about six months in 2016. Pinpointing the source of a one-off FRB, which can last for a fraction of a millisecond, has proved exceedingly difficult, until now.

In their new study, the researchers detected the lone FRB using an array of 36 satellites called the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope. When an FRB passes the array, each satellite picks up the burst's signal a fraction of a millisecond apart. Using these subtle time differences, the researchers were able to figure out which direction the burst came from, and approximately how far it traveled.

The ASKAP observations pointed to a Milky-Way-size galaxy about 3.6 billion light-years away from Earth. With some help from several other large telescopes around the world, the researchers zoomed in on this galaxy to learn that it was relatively old and not forming many new stars.

According Adam Deller, an astrophysicist at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia and co-author of the new study, the properties of this distant galaxy sit in stark contrast to the galaxy that created a repeating fast-radio burst that was detected in 2016.

"The burst we localized and its host galaxy look nothing like the 'repeater' and its host," Deller said in the statement. "It comes from a massive galaxy that is forming relatively few stars. This suggests that fast radio bursts can be produced in a variety of environments."

While the repeating FRB detected a few years ago was likely created by a neutron star or supernova explosion (common engines of star formation in active galaxies), this individual burst could have been caused by something else entirely, the researchers wrote.

What else, exactly? Nobody knows yet — but radioactive belches from supermassive black holes or the engines of alien spacecraft have not been ruled out. Only by pinpointing more FRBs will researchers be able to unravel this cosmic mystery. Fortunately, the authors of the new study wrote, now that they've got one under their belt, finding the next one should be a little easier. </s> Scientists have, for the first time, pinpointed the source of a mysterious one-off pulse of cosmic energy known as a fast radio burst.

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) have perplexed researchers for years, appearing as fleeting signals from the distant universe that can’t yet be explained definitively.

It’s thought that these brief flashes may come from black holes or neutron stars, though some have even speculated they may be of alien origin.

While scientists recently were able to trace the origin of a repeating FRB, which pulsed numerous times over a span of months, finding the source of a single burst that lasts less than a millisecond is far more challenging.

In a remarkable breakthrough, an Australian-led team with the Gemini South telescope in Chile says they’ve traced a single FRB to a galaxy roughly 3.6 billion light-years away.

‘It is especially challenging to pinpoint FRBs that only flash once and are gone,’ says Keith Bannister of Australia’s Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), who led the Australian team.

The one-off FRB, known as FRB 180924, was spotted in September 2018 using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope.

This radio telescope array has 36 antennas working together as a single instrument to scour the skies for FRBs.

By calculating the minute differences in the amount of time light reaches each of the 36 antennas, the team says it was able to trace the burst back to its home.

‘From these tiny time differences — just a fraction of a billionth of a second — we identified the burst’s home galaxy,’ said team member Adam Deller, of Swinburne University of Technology.

The team then further analyzed the distance and other characteristics using Gemini South telescope, along with the W.M. Keck Observatory and European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT).

‘The Gemini South data absolutely confirmed that the light left the galaxy about 4 billion years ago,’ said Nicolas Tejos of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, who led the Gemini observations.

‘When we managed to get a position for FRB 180924 that was good to 0.1 arcsecond, we knew that it would tell us not just which object was the host galaxy, but also where within the host galaxy it occurred,’ said Deller.

‘We found that the FRB was located away from the galaxy’s core, out in the ‘galactic suburbs.”’

The breakthrough could be a step toward finally understanding what gives rise to FRBs in the first place, the researchers say.

It could also lead to more efficient ways of pinpointing their origins.

‘Much like gamma-ray bursts two decades ago, or the more recent detection of gravitational wave events, we stand on the cusp of an exciting new era where we are about to learn where fast radio bursts take place,’ said team member Stuart Ryder of Macquarie University, Australia.

‘Ultimately though, our goal is to use FRBs as cosmological probes, in much the same way that we use gamma ray bursts, quasars, and supernovae.’ </s> For the first time, a single burst of cosmic radio waves has been traced to its point of origin: in this case, a galaxy about 3.6 billion light-years from Earth.

These radio bursts are only millisecond-long radio flashes, and such rapid bursts themselves aren’t rare in space. But finding out where they came from is incredibly difficult.

People love to believe that they’re from an advanced extraterrestrial civilization, and this hypothesis hasn’t been ruled out entirely by researchers at Breakthrough Listen, a scientific research program dedicated to finding evidence of intelligent life in the universe.

Astronomers were able to pin down the source of a repeating fast radio burst in 2017. But single radio bursts are harder to pinpoint because they don’t reoccur.

The single radio burst, dubbed FRB 180924, was discovered by the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder radio telescope, or ASKAP, in Western Australia.

Three of the largest telescopes around the world — Keck, Gemini South and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope — were able to image the burst. The findings of this observation were published Thursday in the journal Science.

Fast radio bursts, often referred to as FRBs, were first discovered by astronomers in 2007. The quest to discover more radio bursts since then has uncovered 85, including a couple that repeat from the same location.

“This is the big breakthrough that the field has been waiting for since astronomers discovered fast radio bursts,” said Keith Bannister, lead study author and principal research engineer at CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency.

Because the bursts are so short and hard to track, Bannister’s team found a way to freeze and save data collected by the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder in a fraction of a second after the telescope detects a burst.

Data from the detection was used to create a map showing the point of origin. The burst came from a galaxy about the size of our own, 3.6 billion light-years away. It’s on the outskirts of that galaxy.

“If we were to stand on the Moon and look down at the Earth with this precision, we would be able to tell not only which city the burst came from, but which postcode — and even which city block,” Bannister said.

“We identified the burst’s home galaxy and even its exact starting point, 13,000 light-years out from the galaxy’s centre in the galactic suburbs,” Adam Deller, an author of the study and an associate professor at the Swinburne University of Technology’s Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, said in a statement.

Compared with the origin point of the repeating fast radio burst detected in 2017, this single source origin is very different.

The repeating burst came from a small galaxy full of forming stars. The single burst came from a massive galaxy that has low rates of star formation.

“This suggests that fast radio bursts can be produced in a variety of environments, or that seemingly one-off bursts detected so far by ASKAP are generated by a different mechanism to the repeater,” Deller said.

Of course, the biggest mystery of fast radio bursts in space endures: Why do they happen? But knowing where they come from is a giant step in the right direction of understanding them.

The bursts can act like a signature for decoding the space between star systems.

“These bursts are altered by the matter they encounter in space,” said Jean-Pierre Macquart, study author and associate professor at the Curtin Institute for Radio Astronomy., in a statement “Now we can pinpoint where they come from, we can use them to measure the amount of matter in intergalactic space.” </s> Australian scientists have pinpointed, in a world-first, the precise location of a mysterious burst of radio waves that originated in another galaxy.

CSIRO researchers discovered the pulse of energy using a radio telescope in Western Australia and two other telescopes on two continents.

The combination of hi-tech equipment enabled the scientists to determine the unidentified bursts had come from a Milky Way-sized galaxy 3.6 billion light years away from Earth.

Australian scientists have pinpointed, in a world-first, the precise location of a mysterious burst of radio waves that originated in another galaxy 3.6 billion light years away. (Supplied - CSIRO)

The question now – especially for those who believe in the possibility of alien life - is how the waves are being produced, and by what.

“This is the big breakthrough that the field has been waiting for since astronomers discovered fast radio bursts in 2007,” CSIRO lead author Dr Keith Bannister said in a statement today.

"If we were to stand on the Moon and look down at the Earth with this precision, we would be able to tell not only which city the burst came from, but which postcode – and even which city block.”

CSIRO researchers discovered the pulse of energy using a radio telescope in Western Australia and two other telescopes on two continents. (Supplied - CSIRO)

Since 2007, 85 bursts of radio waves have been detected coming across the universe – including “repeaters” that suggest multiple pulses coming from the same location.

Despite that, scientists have never been able to geo-locate the origins of radio wave bursts, which last less than a millisecond.

The CSIRO’s Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), which is located in Murchison north-east of Geraldton in the WA outback, pinpointed the strange sound – known as FRB 180924 – to a galaxy that has only been named as DES J214425.25−405400.81.

The question now – especially for those who believe in the possibility of alien life - is how the waves are being produced, and by what. (Supplied - CSIRO)

Chile’s Very Large Telescope and Gemini South telescope, as well as Hawaii’s Keck telescope, were then used by the researchers to map and measure the distance the radio wave had travelled.

“It comes from a massive galaxy that is forming relatively few stars,” Dr Adam Deller, from the Swinburne University of Technology, said in a statement.

“This suggests that fast radio bursts can be produced in a variety of environments, or that the seemingly one-off bursts detected so far by ASKAP are generated by a different mechanism to the repeater.”

The exact cause or meaning of the radio waves are yet to be determined, however scientists have said that being able to pinpoint their geo-location in the universe is a major step towards figuring that out.

The exact cause or meaning of the radio waves are yet to be determined, however scientists have said that being able to pinpoint their geo-location in the universe is a major step towards figuring that out. (Supplied - CSIRO)

“These bursts are altered by the matter they encounter in space,” Dr Jean-Pierre Macquart from Curtin University said in a statement.

“Now we can pinpoint where they come from, we can use them to measure the amount of matter in intergalactic space.”

The scientists involved in the discovery hope that could mean they will be able to understand what may lie in galaxies as far away as the one emitting the radio waves. </s> A radio signal coming from a galaxy billions of light-years away has been discovered by scientists. What is producing the signal—a fast radio burst, or FRB—is unknown.

FRBs are radio signals that last just a few milliseconds. What causes them is not known, because it has been impossible to work out where they came from. They were first identified decades ago, but they are normally found in data long after the event has happened.

Pinpointing the source of an FRB is a bit like seeing a bright camera flash in a very dark room—and then trying to find the camera in the dark. On top of that, the room is potentially billions of light-years in size.

Scientists have identified dozens of FRBs and most appear to be one-off events. This led them to speculate that they could be produced some cataclysmic event, such as a neutron star collapsing into a black hole.

However, the mystery deepened in 2016 when researchers discovered an FRB that appeared to be repeating. This discovery—known as FRB 121102—meant that, at least in this case, a one-off event could not explain it. Since then, researchers have been able to trace back these radio signals to the star-forming region of a dwarf galaxy three billion light-years away, and are now working to determine the cause. One of the most popular theories is that the bursts are coming from a recently-formed magnetar—a spinning neutron star with an extremely high magnetic field.

But by repeating, FRB 121102 is an anomaly. For the vast majority of FRBs, scientists do not know where they come from or what is causing them.

In a study published in the journal Science, an international team of researchers has announced they have discovered where a single FRB came from—a galaxy over four billion light-years away. The burst, named FRB 18092, was first identified in September, 2018 using the 36-antenna Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope.

After the initial event, the team, led by Keith Bannister of Australia's Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), used the tiny differences in the time it took for the light from the signal to reach various telescope antennas to zoom in on the where the FRB came from.

Not only were they able to trace it to the galaxy it came from, they were also able to find its position within the galaxy—in the "galactic suburbs." "It's a very average galaxy," study author Ryan Shannon, from Australia's Swinburne University of Technology, told Newsweek. "The burst comes from the outskirts of it, away from the center of the galaxy."

The galaxy where FRB 18092 came from is very different to that of FRB 121102. "If anything the galaxy has an old stellar population," Shannon said. "This is in contrast to the repeater which has a young stellar population."

The team does not know what celestial event caused the burst, and finding that the

two known FRB locations are very different raises even more questions: "Astronomers providing explanations for fast radio bursts will need to take pause given this discovery," Shannon said. "A lot of the theory of what causes FRBs is built around the first repeater, its host galaxy and environment. The fact that the hosts are so different means that if there is only one source, there would need to be a re-think of the theory. If not....there could be different ways to produce the bursts."

He also said that given there are thousands of FRBs in the sky every day, a single catastrophic event may not be sufficient to explain these mystery signals: "It would need to be a catastrophic event that occurs relatively regularly."

However, he added: "It's hard to rule out magnetars, as they are the only objects we know of that have the power to produce the intense radio pulses we see from FRBs. There's been a second channel proposed to form magnetars—the merger of white dwarf stars. These would be found in the outskirts of old galaxies."

The discovery has been welcomed by astronomers. Jason W. T. Hessels, from the University of Amsterdam, who was not involved in the study, said it was a "seminal result." He told Newsweek: "To understand the physical origin(s) of FRBs, and whether there are multiple types of FRB generators, we absolutely need precision localisations that unambiguously identify the host galaxies of these sources. The fact that this FRB is in a host galaxy that is quite unlike the dwarf galaxy of the first repeater, FRB 121102, indeed suggests that they could be from different types of objects, and that repeating and non-repeating FRBs come from physically distinct source types. However, more precision localisations are needed for us to build up a clear picture of what's going on."

Paul Scholz, from Canada's Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory, who was also not involved, told Newsweek: "The second localization presented in [the study] is different from FRB 121102 in almost every way: the source is not repeating, it was found to be in a large galaxy with an old population of stars, and most of the other pieces of evidence that support the young magnetar theory aren't present.

"This means that either 1) this FRB is caused by a different type of source than FRB 121102, or 2) the source that causes both FRBs is the same, but can occur in both dwarf galaxies with young recently-formed stars and massive galaxies with older, evolved stars. (1) would mean that there are multiple phenomena that can generate FRBs and (2) would limit the types of phenomena that could cause FRBs to those that can occur in both young and old environments.

"To disentangle these two possibilities we'll need to build up more host galaxy identifications, so I'm looking forward to further results from ASKAP and other telescopes that can provide these precise localizations."

Shannon said the team hopes to find even more bursts. If they are able to trace more FRBs back to their host galaxies, they will be able to start finding similarities that could help solve the mystery. Should they find out what is causing these radio signals, it may open up a new way for scientists to study the universe, he added. </s> Fast-Radio Bursts (FRBs) are one of the most puzzling phenomena facing astronomers today. Essentially, FRBs are brief radio emissions from distant astronomical sources whose cause remains unknown. In some cases, FRBs that have been detected that have been repeating, but most have been one-off events. And while repeating sources have been tracked back to their point of origin, no single events have ever been localized.

Until now. Using the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) and other radio telescopes from around the world, an Australian-led team of astronomers managed to confirm the distance to an intense radio burst that flashed for just a thousandth of a second. The constitutes the first non-repeating FRB to be traced back to its source, which in this case was a galaxy located 4 billion light-years away.

Since the first FRB was discovery in 2007 (the “Lorimer Burst”), radio astronomers have been eagerly waiting for a chance to observe more. To date, forty events have been detected (most of which were retrieved from archival data) and a handful traced back to their sources. And yet, astronomers still don’t know what causes them, with theories ranging from rapidly rotating neutron stars and black holes to alien radio signals.

Detecting FRBs is rather challenging since most last for only a millisecond and tracing them back to their source is even more difficult. In this case, the FRB (known as FRB 180924) was a single burst that disappeared as suddenly as it appeared – unlike others that can flash multiple times over an extended period. The results were published in a study that recently appeared in Science.

The pulse was first spotted by researchers at ASKAP in 2018 during a dedicated search by the array’s 36 radio telescopes antennas. The researchers then used the minuscule differences in time that it took for the signal to reach the different antennas in the array to localize the source of the pulse. From these differences, they were able to determine the burst’s home galaxy.

As Adam Deller – a researcher from Swinburne University of Technology and a lead author on the study – explained:

“When we managed to get a position for FRB 180924 that was good to 0.1 arcsecond, we knew that it would tell us not just which object was the host galaxy, but also where within the host galaxy it occurred. We found that the FRB was located away from the galaxy’s core, out in the ‘galactic suburbs.’”

The team then enlisted the help of researchers from the Gemini South Telescope and the ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile and the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii to observe the galaxy and determine its distance and other characteristics. The Gemini telescope was especially helpful since it was designed with these sorts of observations in mind.

This is because the 8.1-meter (~26.5 ft) Gemini South Telescope was designed to provide images of superior quality and depth in the optical and infrared wavelengths. Nevertheless, it was the combined efforts of these three observatories and their advanced suite of instruments that made the localization of the galaxy possible.

Nicolas Tejos, a researcher from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso in Chile, led the Gemini observations. As he explained in a Gemini Observatory press statement:

“The Gemini South data absolutely confirmed that the light left the galaxy about 4 billion years ago… ASKAP gave us the two-dimensional position in the sky, but the Gemini, Keck, and VLT observations locked down the distance, which completes the three-dimensional picture.”

Knowing where an FRB of this type occurs in a galaxy is important to astronomers because it allows them to get some hint of what the progenitor might have been. Thus far, most origin theories involve a massive, compact object (i.e. a neutron star or black hole), so knowing where an FRB occurs within a galaxy can tell astronomers whether it is the formation, evolution, or collision/destruction of these objects that causes the radio burst.

By knowing where within a galaxy FRBs occur, astronomers also hope to be able to place constraints on what could be causing them. As Stuart Ryder, a researcher from Macquarie University and a member of the research team, expressed, the study of FRBs is on the cutting-edge field of astronomical research:

“Much like gamma-ray bursts two decades ago, or the more recent detection of gravitational wave events, we stand on the cusp of an exciting new era where we are about to learn where fast radio bursts take place. Ultimately though, our goal is to use FRBs as cosmological probes, in much the same way that we use gamma-ray bursts, quasars, and supernovae.”

Such a map, according to Ryder, could help resolve the ongoing “missing baryon problem”. This refers to the gap between the observed amount of baryons (the subatomic building blocks of matter) in the Universe and what theoretical models predict. At present, standard models of cosmology predict that they are likely located in the warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM), but all attempts to find them have so proved unsuccessful.

But by pinpointing where FRBs originate, and how fast their light has traveled, astronomers might be able to gauge the density of the intervening material between Earth and the radio sources. With a large enough sample, astronomers could also create a 3D cross-sectional map of where baryons are located between galaxies and in what kinds of concentrations.

Thanks to the combined efforts of all the researchers and observatories involved, FRB 180924 is the second FRB signal to have been localized. However, the other signal (FRB 121102) was a repeating signal that flashed more than 150 times. While both types of signals are relatively rare, single FRBs are much more common than repeating ones. The discovery of FRB 180924, therefore, could lead to vastly-improved methods of localization.

The ability to locate FRBs, especially non-repeating ones, will also go a long way towards determining their exact cause. As Evan Keane – Project Scientist and the holder of the MERAC Prize for Observational Astrophysics because of his groundbreaking work on FRBs – said in a related SKA press release:

“In order to fully exploit the potential of FRBs as cosmological probes, it’s essential to be able to localize them this precisely, and ASKAP has done just that for the first time. It’s an amazing step for FRB science. The ultimate goal will be to go deeper in redshift and localize thousands of FRBs, this is where SKA will come in.”

Astronomy sure has been heating up in recent years. Between the explosion in exoplanets discoveries, the first-time detection of gravitational waves, the first-ever image of a black hole, and now the study of FRBs, there scarcely seems to be a field that is not experiencing a revolution! One can only imagine where it will all lead…

Be sure to check out this video that explains how FRB 180924 was detected and localized, courtesy of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO): </s> Astronomers have located the origins of a one-off burst of cosmic radio waves in space for the first time.

A powerful shiver of waves which travelled around 3.6 billion light years from a Milky Way-sized galaxy was pinpointed by researchers using new technology, according to results in the journal Science.

‘This is the big breakthrough that the field has been waiting for since astronomers discovered fast radio bursts in 2007,’ said lead author Keith Bannister, from Australia’s national science agency.

‘If we were to stand on the Moon and look down at the Earth with this precision, we would be able to tell not only which city the burst came from, but which postcode and even which city block,’ he added.

The discovery was made by an Australian-led international team using a new radio telescope belonging to the Commonwealth

Astronomers, who used three of the world’s largest optical telescopes in their inquiries, hope the breakthrough will move them closer to discovering the causes of fast radio bursts, which remain unknown.

Since 2007, just 85 cosmic radio wave bursts have been detected.

Most are ‘one-offs” but a small amount are ‘repeaters’ which recur in the same place.

Two years ago, astronomers found a “repeater” home galaxy but this is the first time they have exactly located a ‘one-off’ ripple.

The technology used in the discovery was the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope.

Team member Adam Deller, of Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, added: ‘The burst we localised and its host galaxy look nothing like the ‘repeater’ and its host.

‘It comes from a massive galaxy that is forming relatively few stars.

‘This suggests that fast radio bursts can be produced in a variety of environments, or that the seemingly one-off bursts detected so far by ASKAP are generated by a different mechanism to the repeater.’ </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.
Scientists announce, through the Science journal, that they discover the source of a fast radio burst for the first time. FRB 180924, a non-repeating FRB which was detected in September 2018 using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, originates from a large galaxy known as DES J214425.25−405400.81 located 3.6 billion light-years from Earth.