By Cheyenne Macdonald For Dailymail.com
Published: 20:23 BST, 27 June 2019 | Updated: 20:25 BST, 27 June 2019
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Scientists have, for the first time, pinpointed the source of a mysterious one-off pulse of cosmic energy known as a fast radio burst.
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) have perplexed researchers for years, appearing as fleeting signals from the distant universe that can’t yet be explained definitively.
It’s thought that these brief flashes may come from black holes or neutron stars, though some have even speculated they may be of alien origin.
While scientists recently were able to trace the origin of a repeating FRB, which pulsed numerous times over a span of months, finding the source of a single burst that lasts less than a millisecond is far more challenging.
In a remarkable breakthrough, an Australian-led team with the Gemini South telescope in Chile says they’ve traced a single FRB to a galaxy roughly 3.6 billion light-years away.
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Scientists have, for the first time, pinpointed the source of a mysterious one-off pulse of cosmic energy known as a fast radio burst. The artist's impression above shows the signal and its origin billions of light years away
‘It is especially challenging to pinpoint FRBs that only flash once and are gone,’ says Keith Bannister of Australia’s Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), who led the Australian team.
The one-off FRB, known as FRB 180924, was spotted in September 2018 using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope.
This radio telescope array has 36 antennas working together as a single instrument to scour the skies for FRBs.
By calculating the minute differences in the amount of time light reaches each of the 36 antennas, the team says it was able to trace the burst back to its home.
‘From these tiny time differences — just a fraction of a billionth of a second — we identified the burst’s home galaxy,’ said team member Adam Deller, of Swinburne University of Technology.
The team then further analyzed the distance and other characteristics using Gemini South telescope, along with the W.M. Keck Observatory and European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT).
‘The Gemini South data absolutely confirmed that the light left the galaxy about 4
