Posted on 06/08/2020 8:20:05 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are extragalactic flashes of light that pack a serious wallop, unleashing in a few milliseconds as much energy as Earth's sun does in a century.
More than 100 FRBs have been discovered to date, and most of them are one-offs, flaring up just a single time (as far as we know). In January of this year, astronomers reported that one member of the "repeater" class, called FRB 180916.J0158+65, appears to exhibit a 16-day activity cycle: It fires off bursts for a four-day stretch, goes quiet for 12 days and then starts all over again.
FRB 180916 was the first known to erupt in such a periodic way. And now scientists have spotted another.
Researchers monitored the known repeater FRB 121102 with the Lovell Telescope, a 250-foot-wide (76 meters) radio dish at Jodrell Bank Observatory in England, over the course of five years. They found strong indications of a 157-day activity cycle; 121102 seems to flare up for 90 days and then go silent for 67, the team reported in a new study.
It's unclear what's behind such cyclic activity, though scientists do have a few ideas. For example, periodic flare-ups could be caused by a wobble in the rotational axis of a highly magnetized neutron star known as a magnetar. Or they could be linked to the orbital motions of a neutron star in a binary system.
The wobble effects are expected to manifest over the span of a few weeks, study team members said. So they seem compatible with FRB 180916's 16-day cycle but not with that of FRB 121102, which is 10 times longer. But who knows? And there's also no guarantee that the same phenomenon is driving the periodicity of both repeating FRBs.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
It’s a countdown. A real slow one, but a countdown.
The whole FRB thing is one of the most interesting developments in astronomy since quasars, back in the early ‘60s.
Ming the Merciless?
“Send More Chuck Berry!”
*** It fires off bursts for a four-day stretch, goes quiet for 12 days and then starts all over again. ***
Looks like it takes the Little Green Men a long time to reload! File this away for when Capt. Kirk gets there and needs to slip inside their planetary defenses.
4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42
That would be 157 earth-days?
Why the hell would a deep-space event be on a cycle based on our solar system?
You been watching the movie “Independence Day” recently?
#CouldBeALongWar
“... periodic flare-ups could be caused by a wobble in the rotational axis of a highly magnetized neutron star known as a magnetar. Or they could be linked to the orbital motions of a neutron star in a binary system.”
I have no idea what that means.
Only if a green lady is involved.
Timer pluses for extra-solar encrypted communications
Sometimes it’s best not to invite the more advanced to your puny little planet.
HR Haddon!
[windflier originally posted this in 2015!]
How else are you going to measure it?
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