Scientists have found a rare feature in the polarization of three repeating radio bursts, suggesting that such a property may not be all that rare.
A team of researchers has used data from the world’s largest radio telescope to find circular polarization quick bangs Radio repeated and active, something never seen before in FRBs. The discovery could help reveal the nature of one of the most mysterious events in the universe.
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Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are bursts so intense that they can exceed the energy produced by the Sun in a month or even a year. They come from deep space, but astronomers still don’t know how and why.
Some of these flashes last only a few milliseconds and disappear forever, but others, rarer, less than 5% of FRBs ever identified, repeat themselves, making the mystery even more intriguing.
The earliest known flash repeater is cataloged as FRB20121102A, while the earliest known persistently active repeater is FRB20190520B. The 500-metre aperture spherical radio telescope (FAST) provided data from active episodes of both events, detailing the polarization of these radio signals.
Carrying important information about waves in the electromagnetic spectrum, polarization is one of the fundamental properties of light and other types of emissions, such as radio itself. Many light sources, such as the Sun, emit unpolarized light, but linear polarization has been found in all repeating FRBs.
Previously, FRB20201124A (discovered after the other two mentioned above) was the first case of a repeating FRB exhibiting circular polarity. If we consider all types of fast radio bursts, circular polarization has been found in 5% of the detected events.
Now, to the scientists’ surprise, FAST has revealed circular polarization in both FRB20121102A and FRB20190520B. With these results, the number of repeating FRBs with this property increased from one (20201124A) to three.
That may seem small, but there are also a few samples of repeating radio bursts. This suggests that, perhaps, this feature is present in many more repeating FRBs than previously imagined. It could also be something common.
A deeper analysis of polarization using FAST can help obtain more conclusive results on the subject and even on the FRB mechanisms themselves, bringing scientists one step closer to solving the mystery about the origin of these events.
The article describing the results was published in Scientific Bulletin🇧🇷
Source: Scientific Bulletin🇧🇷 Chinese Academy of Sciences
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Camila Luna is a writer at Gossipify, where she covers the latest movies and television series. With a passion for all things entertainment, Camila brings her unique perspective to her writing and offers readers an inside look at the industry. Camila is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in English and is also a avid movie watcher.
