We鈥檝e found three new fast radio bursts (FRBs) flashing from space, and one of them is the brightest we鈥檝e ever seen.
FRBs are some of the most difficult to spot phenomena in the universe. They are powerful blasts of radio waves that flash from distant space for milliseconds and then disappear 鈥� and we have no idea what causes them.
Because they are fleeting, we鈥檝e only detected 33 FRBs so far. Now, two groups of researchers have seen three more over the course of the first 11 days of March.
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The first was spotted on 1 March by the Breakthrough Listen project, a search for alien communications. The second and third were caught bursting on 9 and 11 March, respectively, by a team of researchers led by at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. Their FRB search is designed to run in the background of a project that looks at pulsars.
Both groups reported their findings on the Astronomer鈥檚 Telegram , a website where astronomers can post new observations of short-lived cosmic phenomena. All three FRBs were found using the Parkes Observatory in Australia.
A stroke of luck
鈥淔inding three this quickly is quite unusual,鈥� says at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. 鈥淚t seems like it was just luck.鈥�
鈥淭he burst on 9 March was by far the brightest one we鈥檝e seen,鈥� says at West Virginia University in Morgantown. According to the , a list of FRBs and their properties maintained by at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, it is about 4.5 times brighter than the next brightest signal.
Of the 33 FRBs in the catalogue, only one has been detected flashing more than once. Some researchers have hypothesised that all FRBs repeat, and that they鈥檙e too dim for us to see all of the bursts.
Three of many
If that is the case, then the 9 March burst is particularly promising. 鈥淚f we believe that all FRBs repeat and it鈥檚 just a matter of waiting long enough for one to be bright enough, we should be able to detect more pulses from this one because it鈥檚 so bright,鈥� says McLaughlin.
We鈥檝e been able to make more detailed observations of the repeating FRB than any other ones by virtue of its multiple blasts, so another repeater might help us figure out what FRBs really are.
And it seems like we鈥檒l be detecting a lot more FRBs in the coming year. 鈥淓veryone鈥檚 sort of jumping on this bandwagon of looking for FRBs in the background all the time no matter what else is going on,鈥� says McLaughlin. 鈥淭his should lead to a huge uptick in detections in the next year or so.鈥�
Read more: Cosmic radio bursts tracked to home galaxy for first time
