Radio Bursts Similar To Human Heartbeats Found Billions Of Light-Years Away

Strange bursts of radio signals have been detected by astronomers that have a pattern similar to that of a human heartbeat.

Chalmers University of Technology/Dani?lle Futselaar, artsource.nl

Originating from a galaxy located billions of light-years away, they've categorised it as a fast radio burst (FRB).

To the unaware, FRBs are intense radio wave bursts that last at most a few milliseconds. However, the one recently discovered lasted a good three seconds long, making it 1,000 times longer than usual FRBs.

A strange heartbeat

What was even stranger was the pattern of the radio signals -- it burst in a periodic pattern of a beating heart, repeating every 0.2 seconds. Named FRB20191221A, researchers don¡¯t really know its exact source but are of the belief that it could have come from either a magnetar or a radio pulsar.

Daniele Michilli, a postdoctoral scholar at MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, explained, ¡°There are not many things in the universe that emit strictly periodic signals. Examples that we know of in our own galaxy are radio pulsars and magnetars, which rotate and produce a beamed emission similar to a lighthouse. And we think this new signal could be a magnetar or pulsar on steroids.¡±

CHIME

Observing the signal pattern, they saw similarities with emissions from radio pulsars and magnetars from our galaxy. Radio pulsars emit beams of radio waves that appear to pulse as the neutron star spins, whereas magnetars also have similar emissions due to their powerful magnetic field.

Researchers hope to detect more signals from the source and explore using it as an astrophysical clock. Moreover, data derived from the source like the frequency of bursts and how they change as the source moves away from the Earth can also allow measuring the rate of the expansion of the universe.

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