Radio waves from mystery source detected

Canberra: Australian scientists have detected a short sharp flash of radio waves from a mysterious source up to 5.5 billion light years away from the earth, media reported on Tuesday. The flash was detected by the scientists of Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) at Parkes radio telescope in Australia, reported Xinhua.

In Melbourne, Swinburne University of Technology PhD student Emily Petroff ‘saw’ the burst live - a first for the astronomers. Lasting only milliseconds, the first such radio burst was discovered in 2007 by the astronomers. Six more bursts, apparently from outside the galaxy, have now been found with the Parkes telescope, in New South Wales, and a seventh with the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico.

Astronomers worldwide have been vying to explain the phenomenon. "These bursts were generally discovered weeks, months or even more than a decade after they happened," said Petroff. "We are the first to catch one in real time," Petroff said. Confident that she would spot a ‘live’ burst, Petroff had an international team of astronomers poised to make rapid follow-up observations, at wavelengths from radio to X-ray.

After the Parkes telescope saw the burst go off, the team swung into action on twelve telescopes around the world - in Australia, California, the Canary Islands, Chile, Germany, Hawaii, and India - as well as space based telescopes. "We can rule out some ideas because no counterparts were seen in the optical, infrared, ultraviolet or X-ray," CSIRO's head of astrophysics Simon Johnston said.

"However, the neat idea that we are seeing a neutron star imploding into a black hole remains a possibility," Johnston. The 64-metre wide Parkes radio telescope New South Wales claimed a place in history in July 1969 when it received television transmissions of Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon.

One of the big unknowns of fast radio bursts is their distance. The characteristics of the radio signal - how it is ‘smeared out’ in frequency from travelling through space - indicate that the source of the new burst was up to 5.5 billion light-years away. "This means it could have given off as much energy in a few milliseconds as the sun does in a day," Petroff said. She said identifying the origin of the fast radio bursts is now only a matter of time. "We've set the trap. Now we just have to wait for another burst to fall into it."