{"id":28488,"date":"2019-01-10T02:23:15","date_gmt":"2019-01-10T02:23:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=28488"},"modified":"2019-01-10T02:23:15","modified_gmt":"2019-01-10T02:23:15","slug":"mysterious-repeating-radio-bursts-baffle-physicists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=28488","title":{"rendered":"Mysterious repeating radio bursts baffle physicists"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Physicists have been stunned by the detection of a number of rapidly repeating radio waves coming from deep space<\/a>, according to two new studies published in Nature.<\/p>\n

Although scientists have some theories about what causes the so-called repeating fast radio bursts (FRBs) and their origin, exact details are still unknown.<\/p>\n

“FRBs, it seems, are likely generated in dense, turbulent regions of host galaxies,” Shriharsh Tendulkar, a corresponding author for both studies and an astronomer at McGill University in Canada<\/a>, told AFP news agency.<\/p>\n

“The fact that the bursts are repeated rules out any cataclysmic models in which the source is destroyed while generating the burst,” he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“An FRB emitted from a merger of two neutron stars, or a neutron star and a black hole, for example, cannot repeat.”<\/p>\n

FRBs flash only for a micro-instant, but can emit as much energy as the sun does in 10,000 years.<\/p>\n

FRBs are not rare, as about 60 have been catalogued since 2007, but only one has been a repeating FRB so far, opening up debate as to what causes them.<\/p>\n

However, Tendulkar said it was extremely unlikely the waves were caused by intelligent life.<\/p>\n

“As a scientist I can’t rule it out 100 percent. But intelligent life is not on the minds of any astronomer as a source of these FRBs,” he said.<\/p>\n

The radio waves were detected by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME), the world’s most powerful radio telescope, spread across an area as big as a football pitch.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Constructed in British Columbia, Canada, CHIME is composed of four, 100-metre long half-pipe cylinders of metal mesh which reconstruct images of the sky by processing the radio signals recorded by more than a thousand antennas<\/p>\n

The repeating FRBs were detected during CHIME’s trial run earlier this summer, which used only a small amount of the telescope’s potential power.<\/p>\n

Since then, CHIME has been at its maximum capacity, and it is expected to detect many more of the enigmatic pulses now that it is fully operational.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n SOURCE:
\n Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Physicists have been stunned by the detection of a number of rapidly repeating radio waves coming from deep space, according to two new studies published in Nature. Although scientists have some theories about what causes the so-called repeating fast radio bursts (FRBs) and their origin, exact details are still unknown. “FRBs, it seems, are likely…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":28489,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}