What is Causing a Strange 16-Day Radio Burst from Space?
The mysteries of radio waves from space repeating every 16 days may be solved by CHIME — the same instrument that discovered it.
An odd radio signal is coming from space, starting and stopping in regular 16-day cycles. A team of Canadian astronomers were the first to report finding the source, which they discovered using a novel radio telescope.
This newly-discovered burst of radio waves, called FRB 180814.J0422+73, does not fit any known cause, leading to range-ranging speculations on its nature, ranging from simple interactions between stars, to suggestions the waves are signals from intelligent lifeforms.
A Burst of Inspiration
In 2007, the first fast radio burst (FRB) —a short-lived radio signal from space — was discovered. Since that time, researchers have found several more such events, but repeating events remained rare. They are also usually short-lived, making them exceptionally difficult to track and study.
“Despite searches for periodicity in repeat burst arrival times on time scales from milliseconds to many days, these bursts have hitherto been observed to appear sporadically, and though clustered, without a regular pattern,” researchers report in a pre-print published on arVix.
