“FRBs might be-might be-just this generic phenomenon associated with a whole range of possible sources,” says Cornell University astronomer Shami Chatterjee, who studies the bursts but is not part of the discovery team. They’re also moving toward the conclusion that maybe, as with many other celestial phenomena, there are multiple ways to cook up a fast radio burst. ![]() Scientists are struggling to explain the cosmic anachronism. “This is definitely not a place fast radio bursts are expected to live,” Bryan Gaensler, an astronomer at the University of Toronto and a co-author of the new paper, posted on Twitter. Finding this burst among a cluster of aging stars is kind of like finding a smartphone embedded in Stonehenge-the observation doesn’t make sense. Based on observations to date, scientists surmised that the bursts are powered by young, short-lived cosmic objects called magnetars.īut a fast radio burst discovered last year has now been traced to a globular cluster about 11.7 million light-years away, near the neighboring spiral galaxy M81, according to a paper describing the discovery posted on the scientific preprint server arXiv. Often originating billions of light-years away, the extremely bright, extremely brief bursts of radio waves known as fast radio bursts, or FRBs, have defied explanation since they were first spotted in 2007. The repeating bursts of energy seem to be coming from an ancient group of stars called a globular cluster, which is among the last places astronomers expected to find them. One night a dense fog rolled in, and the military outpost was evacuated within ninety minutes.Bright, fleeting blasts of radio waves coming from the vicinity of a nearby galaxy are deepening one of astronomy’s biggest mysteries. When they reached the town, a local man told them about the storm of 2010. Previous triangulation efforts had led to the discovery of the transmitter for UVB-76: a Russian military base on the outskirts of Povarovo, a small town nineteen miles from Moscow.Īfter the station changed location, two groups of urban explorers and UVB-76 followers travelled to the remote Russian town in an attempt to visit the military bunker that the signal had originated from for over thirty years. The new call sign was read out after the move: “MDZhB”. It seems likely that the heightened activity of 2010 was related to the establishment of the signal in a new location. The flurry of activity and voice messages preceded the most important development in the signal since it began broadcasting in the 1970s. Since October 2010, the station has changed location. The short recording of Swan Lake that was broadcast by the signal in 2010. Snippets of Swan Lake were played, a female voiced counted from one to nine, a question mark was transmitted in Morse code and strange telephone conversations were overheard by the receiver. Online chatter about the signal increased in 2010, as bizarre broadcasts were issued on an almost monthly basis. Just as 4chan created memes like Pedobear and Rickrolling, the online image board served to bring UVB-76 before the eyes of a host of internet users. The modern popularity of UVB-76 can be traced to /x/, 4chan’s non-archiving message board devoted to discussion of paranormal activity and unexplained mysteries. The reason for overhearing telephone conversations and banging noises is that a speaker creating the buzzer is constantly placed next to the microphone, giving the world an eerie insight into whatever cavern the signal originates from. But what listeners quickly realised was that UVB-76 is not a recording. It’s easy to dismiss the signal as pre-recorded, or a looping tone. Since the millenium, voice messages have become more and more frequent. Instead of shutting down with the fall of communism in Russia, UVB-76 became even more active. ![]() Boris, Roman, Olga, Mikhail, Anna, Larisa. Every few years, the buzzer stops, and a Russian voice reads a mixture of numbers and Russian names.Ī typical message came hours before Christmas day, 1997: ![]() Ever since curious owners of shortwave radios first discovered the signal, it has broadcast a repeating buzzing noise. The earliest known recording of it is dated 1982. The radio signal that occupies 4625 kHz has reportedly been broadcasting since the late 1970s.
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