Scientists Track A Lone Blast Of Cosmic Radio Waves Back To Its Source

Astronomers for the first time have been able to track a lone fast radio burst or FRB back to its source. Scientists have long wondered what triggers the brief, but strong bursts of radio waves from other galaxies. The new observations suggest that there may be two different sources for the phenomena.The observations come as for the first item astronomers have been able to identify the home galaxy of a one-off FRB. Prior to this, the only time an FRB had been traced to a particular galaxy was the repeating FRB 121102 that comes from a highly active dwarf galaxy 2.5 billion light-years away. The newly discovered lone FRB comes from a much larger and less active host.

The new FRB was spotted using the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder in the Aussie outback. The array allowed the scientists to pinpoint the origins of the FRB with much more accuracy. The FRB is called Tony for a worker out sick the day it was discovered, but its official name is FRB 180924, and it came from a galaxy called DES J214425.25–405400.81. That galaxy is about 4 billion light-years away in the constellation Grus.

The home galaxy sits on the edge of a disk-shaped galaxy about the size of the milky way that is undergoing little star formation. The single flash that Tony produced led the team to believe that the FRB might have been caused by a neutron star merger.

However, there have been other single time FRBs noted, and scientists believe that the merging of Neutron stars is rare enough that it can't account for all the lone FRBs. More research is being conducted into single time FRBs and should give a clearer picture in the future.