SKA/Subaru/MPIfR: Fast Radio Burst Discovery Finds 'Missing Matter'

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SKA/Subaru/MPIfR: Fast Radio Burst Discovery Finds 'Missing Matter'

Post by bystander » Thu Feb 25, 2016 9:55 pm

New Fast Radio Burst Discovery Finds 'Missing Matter' in the Universe
Square Kilometer Array | Subaru Telescope NAOJ | Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy | 2016 Feb 24
frb.jpg
This image shows the field of view of the Parkes radio telescope on the left.
On the right are successive zoom-ins in on the area where the signal came
from (cyan circular region). The image at the bottom right shows the Subaru
Telescope's image of the FRB galaxy, with the superimposed elliptical regions
showing the location of the fading 6-day afterglow seen with ATCA.
Image Credit: D. Kaplan (UWM), E. F. Keane (SKAO).

An international team of scientists using a combination of radio and optical telescopes identified the distant location of a fast radio burst (FRB) for the first time. This discovery has allowed them to confirm the current cosmological model of the distribution of matter in the universe.

The fast radio burst was detected on April 18, 2015 by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)'s 64-meter Parkes radio telescope in Australia. That observation triggered an international alert to other telescopes to follow up with their observations. Within a few hours, CSIRO's Australian Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), as well as other facilities around the world were looking for the signal.

FRBs are mysterious bright radio flashes generally lasting only a few milliseconds. Their cause is still unknown and there is a long list of phenomena potentially associated with them. FRBs are very difficult to detect; before this discovery only 16 had been observed. ...

Thanks to the ATCA's six 22-m dishes and their combined resolution, the team was able to pinpoint the location of the signal with much greater accuracy than has been possible in the past and detected a radio afterglow that lasted for around 6 days before fading away. This afterglow enabled them to pinpoint the location of the FRB about 1000 times more precisely than for previous events.

The puzzle still required another piece to be put in place. The team used the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ)’s 8.2-m Subaru optical telescope in Hawaii to look at where the signal came from, and identified an elliptical galaxy some 6 billion light years away. "It's the first time we've been able to identify the host galaxy of an FRB" adds Evan Keane. The optical observation also gave them the redshift measurement (the speed at which the galaxy is moving away from us due to the accelerated expansion of the Universe), the first time a distance has been determined for an FRB. ...

FRBs show a frequency-dependent dispersion, a delay in the radio signal caused by how much material it has gone through. “Until now, the dispersion measure is all we had. By also having a distance we can now measure how dense the material is between the point of origin and Earth, and compare that with the current model of the distribution of matter in the Universe” explains Dr Simon Johnston, co-author of the study, from CSIRO’s Astronomy and Space Science division. “Essentially this lets us weigh the Universe, or at least the normal matter it contains.” ...

Discovered for the First Time: "Birthplace" of a Fast Radio Burst
National Institute for Astrophysics, Italy (INAF) | 2016 Feb 24

Solved! First Distance to a 'Fast Radio Burst'
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia | 2016 Feb 24

The Host Galaxy of a Fast Radio Burst - E. F. Keane et al
Astronomers Solve One Mystery of Fast Radio Bursts
and Find Half the Missing Matter in the Universe

Slate Blogs | Bad Astronomy | Phil Plait | 2016 Feb 24
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