CBC | Canadian astronomers find 8 more mysterious repeating fast radio bursts from space
They're called fast radio bursts, or FRBs, and these odd, fleeting signals from space are shrouded in mystery. But thanks to Canada's largest radio telescope, astrophysicists are discovering more of them in their search to learn what makes these objects tick.
In a new study, submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters and pre-printed on arXiv.org, a group of Canadian scientists reveal that the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) telescope detected eight more repeating FRBs. The findings are an important step in better understanding what is creating these powerful signals and where exactly they're coming from.
"The first biggest conclusion [from the paper] is that this is not an anomalous phenomenon. This is for real," said Victoria Kaspi, an astrophysicist at McGill University and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR). "It just takes time and patience to find them. And two, it offers the opportunity to localize them, and that's huge in the FRB field."