Astronomers and other categories of people have always been curious about fast radio bursts (FRBs) coming from the depths of the Universe. The existence of these cosmic phenomenons led to numerous speculations, and it was only a matter of time until theories about alien civilizations trying to say ‘hello’ would emerge.
FRBs are very brief, lasting for only a few milliseconds, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not worth exploring. An international team of astronomers has discovered another such phenomenon, which automatically makes them curious about its possible nature.
The 20190520B FRB ‘waves’ at us from 3 billion light-years away
20190520B is the designation of the newfound FRB in question. It’s also the second discovered repeating FRB that’s associated with a persistent radio source (PRS). The discovery of 20190520B was made possible thanks to the Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) from Guizhou (China). space.com brought the exciting news about the newfound FRB.
The location of the newfound FRB is very far away from Earth: in a dwarf galaxy located 3 billion light-years away.
Di Li from the National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC) explained as space.com quotes:
One of the key questions in the field of FRBs is whether all FRB sources repeat,
I personally favor an evolutionary picture in that all sources repeat, but the activity level drops precipitously as the source ages. Since FRB 20190520B is only the second of around 500 known FRBs to have a so-called PRS counterpart and both are extremely active, they could, in this hypothetical evolutionary picture, represent FRBs’ youth, which lasts not very long.
Another FRB captured the attention of astronomers early this year, and it was igniting from a location much closer to Earth. Known as 20200120E, that FRB was located in a galaxy positioned 11.7 million light-years away from our planet.
