More fast radio bursts detected from same location
Repeated wave blasts suggest nondestructive event as source
COME AGAIN A young neutron star might be behind a repeating source of cosmic radio waves detected at the Arecibo Observatory (left) and the Green Bank Telescope (right).
NOAA/Wikimedia Commons; NRAO/AUI/NSF
A chatty source of radio waves from deep space has a little more to say. Six more blasts of radio energy, each lasting just a few milliseconds, erupted from some phenomenon outside of our galaxy, researchers report in the Dec. 20 Astrophysical Journal. This detection follows 11 previously recorded outbursts of radio waves from the same location, the only known repeater in a class of enigmatic eruptions known as fast radio bursts.
The origins of these radio bursts, 18 of which have been reported since 2007, are an ongoing puzzle (SN: 8/9/14, p. 22). The continuing barrage from this repeating source, roughly 3 billion light-years away in the constellation Auriga, implies that whatever is causing some radio bursts is not a one-time destructive
