CSIRO radio telescope detects 4 high intensity, 1ms bursts 11B LY away

[deltasigma]

This is pretty exciting since there may be one of these occurring every 10 seconds and they can put out as much energy in one millisecond as the sun does in 300,000 years. It’s especially so since no one has any idea what the source may be.

CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope in eastern Australia has detected mysterious ‘flashes’ of radio energy from the distant Universe that may open up a whole new area of astrophysics. The surprising finding, made by a team of scientists from ten institutions in Australia, the USA, UK, Germany and Italy, is published in today’s issue of the journal Science.

“Staggeringly, we estimate there could be one of these flashes going off every ten seconds somewhere in the sky,” said research team member Dr Simon Johnston, Head of Astrophysics at CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science.

Four flashes were detected, each from a different direction and each lasting for only a millisecond (a thousandth of a second).

The characteristics of the radio signal — how it is ‘smeared out’ in frequency from travelling through space — indicate that the flashes came from up to 11 billion light-years away.
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“A single burst of radio emission of unknown origin was detected outside our galaxy about six years ago but no one was certain what it was or even if it was real.”
Dan Thornton, PhD student with the University of Manchester and CSIRO.

edit: cool graphic in sidebar at first link.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

deltasigma, between this and your magnet thread, you are now among my favorite posters on the Dope!

Thanks for bringing this stuff to my attention. Science totally fucking rocks!

[deltasigma]

Thank you very much. I wasn’t sure which thread you meant till I looked in my subscribed list but I assume you mean the LHC upgrade one. Cheers.