A mysterious and explosive radio signal has been discovered coming from a dwarf galaxy located three billion light-years away from planet Earth. According to research published this Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature, this cosmic object is entirely different when compared to similar findings in other galaxies.
Fast radio bursts, known as FRBs, or Fast Radio Bursts, are millisecond bursts of radio waves in space. Several radio bursts have already been tracked, but experts have yet to determine their actual cause. The results of this study have now been released, but investigations began in 2019.
According to CNN, astronomers detected the object, called FRB 190520, when it released a burst of radio waves on May 20, 2019. With the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope in China, researchers discovered the explosion in November. 2019. Through several observations, they noticed something unusual: the object was releasing frequent and repeated bursts of radio waves.
As early as 2020, the team of researchers used the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array telescope to identify the origin of the explosion. Subsequently, the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii was used, which showed that the explosion came from a distant dwarf galaxy.
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