5 fast radio bursts of unknown origin ‘skewer’ galactic neighbor

Astronomers in the Netherlands have discovered five new Fast Radio Bursts in the universe after upgrading their telescope to become “one of the most powerful” in the world.

These bursts of radio waves last only a fraction of a millisecond but are some of the most blindingly bright explosions in the universe, so powerful that they can be seen by telescopes more than four billion light years away, according to the study’s press release.

The team reported that three of the FBRs — one of which packs ten trillion times the amount of energy consumed around the world in a year — had “skewered” our neighboring Triangulum galaxy.

It’s unclear exactly where FBRs come from – some scientists believe that they are released from neutron stars while others hypothesize even more alien origins — because their fleeting nature has made them difficult to study closely, until now.

“We now have an instrument with both a very wide field of view and very sharp vision,” said principal investigator Joeri van Leeuwen in a statement. “And all this live. That is new and exciting.”

The findings, published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics on Wednesday, were made possible with a new supercomputer and upgraded receivers on their telescope in Westerbork.

“One cannot just go buy the complex electronics you need for this,” said system architect Eric Kooistra. “We designed most of the system ourselves, with a large team. That resulted in a state-of-the-art machine, one of the most powerful in the world.”

With the latest technology, scientists hope the phenomena will be increasingly definable, as demonstrated in the new report.

The results also allowed researchers to ascertain the number of “invisible” electrons in the Triangulum galaxy by observing how the burst of light is distorted as it pierces through space, thus further shedding light on the molecular makeup of the universe.

Astronomers have logged a number of fast radio bursts since 2007, according to Space.com, following the advent of ultramodern telescopes.

In June 2021, it was announced that more than 500 fast radio bursts were discovered by Canadian researchers during a 12-month period between 2018 and 2019, The Post previously reported.

In 2019, astrophysicists were able to pinpoint the starting location of a fast radio burst for the first time, from a far-away galaxy that was many billion light years away.