Astronomers have discovered more fast repeating radio bursts coming nearly three million light-years from Earth, raising new questions about the universe.
According to new research published in Nature, an international team of researchers led by Li Di from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, found millisecond-long bursts of radio waves in space once again.
They say these bursts are even more prominent and ‘stranger’ than previous signals.
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While conducting other research, astronomers have been able to locate which home galaxy the radio bursts come from; however, they have found very little explanation for the cause of them.
Li Di and her team gave these fast radio bursts (FRB) the name FRB 20190520B and said they are more robust than the ones scientists have monitored before.
Over 95 per cent of FRBs detected have occurred just once, but repeating bursts make it easier for scientists to figure out where the energy is originating from, according to CNET.
The new evidence suggests that the radio bursts can even change as they hurl through space and age.
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Staff scientist in radio astronomy at the California Institute of Technology Casey Law shared with CNN that how the radio signals emit energy has left clues for scientists.
“Now we actually need to explain this double mystery and why FRBs and persistent radio sources are found together sometimes," she said.
"Is it common when FRBs are young? Or perhaps the object that makes the bursts is a massive black hole that is messily eating up a neighbouring star? Theorists have a lot more detail to work with now, and the scope for explanation is shrinking."
In October 2021, scientists also picked up bizarre FRBs coming from the centre of the Milky Way, according to research published in The Astrophysical Journal.
The signals shocked researchers as they didn’t match any other known astrophysical radio source.
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Ziteng Wang from the University of Sydney, who investigates the sources of gravitational wave events, said that the FRBs might have even come from an undiscovered planet.
"At first we thought it could be a pulsar, a very dense and rapidly rotating remnant star core. A star with huge eruptions was also discussed...The signals from this new source do not match anything we expect from known stellar objects," he said.
Watch this space….literally.
Charisa Bossinakis