Signs of alien life? Radio bursts heard from a faraway galaxy

Since 2007, astronomers have detected these short blasts of radio waves from outer space, each lasting just a few milliseconds, but have been unable to locate any of their origins until now.

Fast Radio Bursts (FRB) are something that have been a mystery to those scientists that have been studying them for over a decade. And with more FRBs pinpointed in the years to come, astronomers will be able to nail down more lines of sight, until they create a 3D model of the cosmos. And in order to do that, they needed to catch one in real time.

Researchers from Australia's CSIRO and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan's Subaru telescope in Hawaii have for the first time calculated the originating location of a radio burst. Dr. Keane and colleagues therefore believe that the FRB originated after collision between two neutron stars.

"The good news is our observations and the model match, we have found the missing matter", Keane said.

Detection... fast radio bursts were first discovered by Australia's famous Parkes radio telescope.

"Whereas with this one, I was awoken by my phone going insane a few seconds after it happened, saying: Evan, wake up!" There was an FRB!"Keane told the BBC".

The CSIRO's Compact Array homed in on the FRB's radio afterglow, which lasted six days and gave the team time to find the source.

Then, the Japanese Subaru telescope took up the search.

Optical observations of the galaxy in which the burst was located provided measurements of the distance to the epicenter of the event. For one, the galaxy FRB 150418 comes from is very old, which allows us to rule out the bright stellar beacons known as pulsars.

In an attempt to increase the amount of data immediately collected on FRBs, the team developed a method for quickly detecting FRBs and alerting a worldwide network for timely follow-up observations. The prevailing theory was that the bursts were emitted from pulsars, but since the galaxy is relatively old, and pulsars are, by definition, relatively new, that explanation can now be eliminated.

A global team of scientists has found a cosmic missing link - the mysterious "missing matter" that eludes even the most powerful and sensitive of telescopes.

Keane's organization, the Square Kilometer Array Organization, is designing a giant radio telescope that should be able to detect lots more of these FRBs. It's a delay in the radio signal caused by the material it passes through. Now, scientists can learn more about the most cataclysmic crashes between massive objects like black holes.

Features of the universe are imprinted on the FRB as it travelled through space, so the scientists were able to measure these features - in particular the frequency-dependent dispersion, which shows how much material the FRB has gone through.

"Essentially this lets us weigh the universe, or at least the normal matter it contains", he said.

On the basis of these findings, "we have found the missing matter", contended Keane.

The universe is thought to be made up of about 70 per cent dark energy, 25 per cent undetectable dark matter, and only about five per cent ordinary matter - the stuff of which planets, stars and humans are made. By measuring the speed at which different shockwaves hit us and the delay between them we can actually estimate the amount of "dark matter" that's slowing them down without our knowledge.