Scientists have spotted repeated blasts of radio signals coming from deep in space. The breakthrough is only the second time scientists have seen such a repeating radio burst. It both deepens the mystery and offers a potential opportunity to finally understand what might be throwing out the burst from a galaxy billions of light years away. Fast radio bursts have been speculated to be the result of everything from exploding stars to transmissions from aliens. But they have remained entirely mysterious, with little evidence at all of where they might be coming from. The flashes only last for a milisecond but they are flung out with the same amount of energy the sun takes 12 months to produce. Probably most exciting of the new bursts is one that scientists saw repeat six times, apparently from the same location. Of the more than 60 fast radio bursts detected so far, only one of them has ever repeated. ✕ Fast radio bursts: the most mysterious message in the universe “Until now, there was only one known repeating FRB. Knowing that there is another suggests that there could be more out there. And with more repeaters and more sources available for study, we may be able to understand these cosmic puzzles—where they’re from and what causes them,” said Ingrid Stairs, a member of the CHIME team and an astrophysicist at UBC. Seeing two repeating signals probably means that there exists – and that humanity will probably find – a "substantial population" of repeating signals, the researchers write in one of the two papers published in Nature. Having two sets of repeating bursts could also allow scientists to understand what distinguishes them from single bursts, helping them understand more about their source and watch for future blasts. Recommended Nasa finds strange alien planet hiding outside our solar system In all the researchers spotted some 13 of the bursts in just a three week period, offering a vast new trove of data for the scientists hunting for their source. Together they could offer some evidence of the extreme or unusual environment they are coming from – or the mysterious technology that some claim alien civilisations could be launching them into space with. “Whatever the source of these radio waves is, it’s interesting to see how wide a range of frequencies it can produce. There are some models where intrinsically the source can’t produce anything below a certain frequency,” says team member Arun Naidu of McGill University. The blasts were discovered by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment in British Columbia. Some scientists had worried that the range of frequencies it can pick up would be too low for it to receive the FRBs – but it found far more than expected, and scientists expect it to identify even more. Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Show all 30 1 /30 Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Solar Flare An image from Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows a 200,000 mile long solar filament ripping through the Sun's corona in September 2013 Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Nasa Celebrates 50 Years of Spacewalking For 50 years, NASA has been "suiting up" for spacewalking. 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The Gemini IV crew conducted scientific experiments, including photography of Earth's weather and terrain, for the remainder of their four-day mission following Ed White's historic spacewalk on June 3 Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Frosty slopes of Mars This image of an area on the surface of Mars, approximately 1.5 by 3 kilometers in size, shows frosted gullies on a south-facing slope within a crater.<doc-sep>Something is happening out there, and astronomers sure wish they knew what it was. For the last several years, they have been teased and baffled by mysterious bursts of radio waves from the distant universe: pops of low-frequency radiation, emitting more energy than the sun does in a day, that occur randomly and disappear immediately. Nobody knows when these “fast radio bursts,” or F.R.B.s, will occur, or where exactly in the cosmos they are occurring. More than 60 of these surprise broadcasts have been recorded so far. About the only thing astronomers agree on is that these signals probably are not extraterrestrials saying hello. So it was big news a year ago when scientists found a repeating radio burster and tracked it to a dwarf galaxy 3 billion light-years from Earth. Subsequent observations suggested that the burst was generated by extremely powerful magnetic fields, most likely ruling out lasers from alien spaceships. Now a group of astronomers from several Canadian universities have announced the discovery of a second radio repeater. The repeating bursts appeared last summer almost as soon as the team turned on and began tuning up a new telescope, the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, or Chime, in British Columbia. The team announced the discovery in a pair of papers in Nature, and in a news conference at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle on Jan. 9.<doc-sep>Something — or someone — is sending massive radio waves throughout the universe. Researchers have rounded up dozens of "fast radio bursts" resonating throughout the universe, but have only seen two instances where waves repeatedly come from the same source, per a paper published Wednesday in Nature. Now, with these repetitive examples on the books, researchers think they may be able to figure out what's causing them. Researchers first identified fast radio bursts in 2007 and have picked up 36 waves since, CBC News says. The bursts are just milliseconds long and travel to Earth from millions of light years away via some immense release of energy. Scientists speculate they could stem from black holes or exploded stars called neutron stars. But overall, they "don't know what can cause an emission that is that powerful," a study coauthor tells Mashable. Most bursts come from their own unique locations, but six of them recently "originat[ed] from a single position on the sky," the study writes. The whole series was detected by an enormous Canadian radio telescope called CHIME, which wasn't even operating at full capacity at the time, CNN says. So with the data from this discovery, and with CHIME fully activated now, researchers could discover "several more pieces in the puzzle" in the near future, a CHIME team member tells CNN.<doc-sep>"And with more repeaters and more sources available for study, we may be able to understand these cosmic puzzles - where they're from and what causes them."<doc-sep>
Canadian astronomers have reportedly discovered a repetitive radio signal some 2.5 billion light-years away from Earth — only the second example known to mankind. A telescope in British Columbia, otherwise known as Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME), detected 13 pulses — or fast radio bursts (FRBs) — in July and August, according to a Monday report from Nature, a British scientific journal. NASA SPACECRAFT SNAPS INCREDIBLE PICTURE OF EARTH The findings were announced by Deborah Good, an astronomer at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington on Wednesday. "Look! We see FRBs," she said of the cosmic flashes, which remain a mystery to astronomers. Before they were spotted over the summer, astronomers reportedly found between 50 and 60 examples of the radio bursts. Good said that "if we had 1,000 examples, we would be able to say many more things about what FRBs are like." The CHIME telescope found, as phrased by Nature.com, "the second known FRB that repeats, meaning that the radio flashes re-appear at the same point in the sky." The first FRB that repeats was detected in 2012. MARS 'TERROR,' FUTURE MOON MISSIONS AND AN EPIC JOURNEY TO THE SUN: 2018'S YEAR IN SPACE The majority of the FRBs discovered by the telescope showed signs of "scattering," Phys.org reported — which led the CHIME team to believe the radio bursts are "powerful astrophysical objects." "That could mean in some sort of dense clump like a supernova remnant," Cherry Ng, an astronomer at the University of Toronto, told the news outlet. "Or near the central black hole in a galaxy. But it has to be in some special place to give us all the scattering that we see." CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Astronomers' studying of FRBs can teach those who study more about where the bursts come from, and whether that region in its galaxy is home to turbulent gas. "Until now, there was only one known repeating FRB.," astronomer Ingrid Stairs, also a member of the CHIME team, said. "Knowing that there is another suggests that there could be more out there. And with more repeaters and more sources available for study, we may be able to understand these cosmic puzzles — where they're from and what causes them."