Fast Radio Bursts Flash throughout the Cosmos

The mysterious and powerful cosmic outbursts could occur as often as once per second in the observable universe

An artist’s illustration of a section of the cosmic web, the filamentary patterns of galaxy clusters and voids that form the large-scale structure of the universe. The bright blue flashes represent brief emissions from fast radio bursts (FRBs). Although each FRB lasts only a few milliseconds, the phenomenon may take place as often as once per second somewhere in the sky.

M. Weiss *CfA*

Join Our Community of Science Lovers!

The bizarre, powerful flashes of light known as fast radio bursts (FRBs) may be far more common than astronomers had thought.

Throughout the universe, at least one FRB is blasting out intense radio emissions every second, a new study suggests.

“If we are right about such a high rate of FRBs happening at any given time, you can imagine the sky is filled with flashes like paparazzi taking photos of a celebrity,” study lead author Anastasia Fialkov, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), said in a statement. [Mysterious Fast Radio Burst's Extragalactic Host Pinpointed (Video)]

On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

FRBs were first spotted in 2007, and astronomers have found about two dozen more of the bursts in the decade since then. The flashes appear to originate in distant galaxies, but their cause remains a mystery. Some astronomers suspect that FRBs are driven by young, fast-spinning neutron stars; other researchers have speculated that FRBs could be generated by intelligent aliens.

Fialkov and fellow CfA astronomer Avi Loeb (who also chairs Harvard University's astronomy department) arrived at their estimate by extrapolating from FRB 121102, a source located 3 billion light-years from Earth that has fired off bursts repeatedly. (Last month, for example, scientists with Breakthrough Listen, a $100 million project that's looking for signs of intelligent alien life throughout the cosmos, spotted 15 repeated pulses coming from FRB 121102.)

If other FRBs are like FRB 121102, then the universe should crackle with their light, the duo found.

“In the time it takes you to drink a cup of coffee, hundreds of FRBs may have gone off somewhere in the universe,” Loeb said in the same statement. “If we can study even a fraction of those well enough, we should be able to unravel their origin.”

Studying FRBs could also shed light on the universe's evolution, Fialkov and Loeb said. For example, FRBs may help researchers better understand the “reionization” epoch — the time in the early universe when a pervading, light-blocking fog of neutral hydrogen was broken into its constituent electrons and protons.

“FRBs are like incredibly powerful flashlights that we think can penetrate this fog and be seen over vast distances,” Fialkov said. “This could allow us to study the 'dawn' of the universe in a new way.”

The new study was published earlier this month in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. You can read it for free at the online preprint site arXiv.org.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Editor's Recommendations

Subscribe to Support Independent Journalism

Great science journalism requires human expertise, time, effort and creativity. And it costs money. That’s why I and the journalists here at Scientific American hope you’ll join our community.

When you subscribe, you are supporting staff and freelance journalists who are passionate about telling science stories that are true, important and compelling. Our editors and reporters are often experts in their fields, which means they understand the nuances of big discoveries and can untangle the breakthroughs from the hype. With a subscription, you are also supporting rigorous fact-checking to ensure the words we publish are precise and accurate. And you’re supporting original illustrations, graphics and photos that bring you closer to an advanced laboratory, an ice sheet in Antarctica or a space mission in orbit. You’re helping us craft other types of high-quality journalism as well: Our newsletters are carefully written, edited and curated by staffers you have or will come to know and love. Our Science Quickly podcast is based on original reporting, collaboration with editors and scientists and exacting production.

Subscriptions keep this engine running so we can continue to deliver thoughtful, rigorous and independent science journalism to you. In an era of viral misinformation, this work is crucial. If you value what we do, I hope you’ll consider joining us as a subscriber

Thank you,

Jeanna Bryner, Editor in Chief, Scientific American