Cosmic waves are puzzling scientists more and more over time. Fast radio bursts are strange phenomena that are believed to originate from massive cataclysms in space. The cosmic radio waves are thought to travel from far away galaxies, but what causes them is the object of mystery.
The best our science can do is to make an educated guess on the matter. There are theories from the collision of singularities to alien craft with unknown agendas. Fast radio bursts that are detected tend to be singular, but three bursts seem to be on repeat. Scientists believe neutron star collisions cause these. Vikram Ravi from the California Institute of Technology has been trying to study and understand the unknown aspects of the universe.
Sources of fast radio bursts remain a mystery
Vikram Ravi has studied the occurrence of single bursts and compared it with known nearby cataclysms. He comments: “The rate of FRBs appears to be higher than the rate of anything we can think of that can make an FRB just once. It’s possible that all of the proposals for cataclysmic sources are simultaneously correct, but perhaps more likely is that most – or even all – FRBs are actually repeaters.”
The thinking behind Ravi’s theories is that everything can happen at once due to the lack of understanding of the subject. He tries to simplify the matter while others complicate it with multiple factors leading to the FRBs. Locating single bursts can be a challenging matter as a radio telescope would need to detect the short millisecond radio wave and be powerful enough to trace its origin. One such array is being currently built and will finish in 2021. The Deep Synoptic Array or DSA is projected to detect and trace over 100 fast radio bursts to their origin.
Tiesha loves to share her passion for everything that’s beautiful in this world. Apart from writing on her beauty blog and running her own beauty channel on Youtube, she also enjoys traveling and photography. Tiesha covers various stories on the website.