Frequent radio bursts, or FRBs, are somewhat of an intergalactic mystery. They were first discovered in 2007 and scientists just keep finding more of them.
FRBs are essentially brief and powerful pulses of energy originating billions of light years away. And even though what an FRB actually is and where they actually come from is unknown, scientists hypothesize that they may be caused by black holes or neutron stars called magnetars.
An exciting new discovery regarding one FRB particular comes from the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope, or FAST, located in China. This frequent radio burst is known as FRB 121102, and was first detected in 2012 by the Arecibo Observatory in central Florida, USA.
This FRB is different from other known FRBs primarily because this one is a repeater. This becomes exciting and different by way of the theoretical origins of these blasts. As mentioned earlier, scientists hypothesize that FRBs are created by the collapse of certain types of neutron stars. However, there are other theories as well. Some think there may be various reasons for the creation of these electromagnetic waves. This theory seems more likely considering FRB 121102 is a repeating blast.
"I just think it is so amazing that nature produces something like that," physicist Ziggy Pleunis of McGill University told one science news outlet, after detailing eight new FRBs in a paper published in August of this year. "Also, I think that there is some very important information in that structure that we just have to figure out how to encode and it has been a lot of fun to try to figure out what exactly that is."
Due to the fact that most FRBs are one-and-done signals, it's somewhat difficult to trace them back to where they came from. But with FRB 121102 and other similar repeating FRBs, scientists are inching closer and closer to pinpointing their mysterious origins.
