OKANAGAN VALLEY, CANADA — New radio waves from outer space have been detected by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment radio telescope, also known as CHIME.
The findings were submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters. It described eight new repeating signals that were detected by the radio telescope.
According to the EU Research & Innovation Magazine, these fast radio bursts, or FRBs, typically last only a few milliseconds but are able to emit more energy than 500 million suns.
The telescope consists of four cylindrical reflectors, each of which are lined with 256 antennas. It continuously scans separate points in the sky, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, searching for FRBs, according to CHIME's website.
In a separate study published in the journal Nature in January, CHIME had previously detected 13 fast radio bursts, only one of which was repeating.
Researchers noticed that among the radio bursts studied, those that sent off signals multiple times tended to send out bursts that lasted a bit longer than radio bursts that only sent out signals once.
These repeating FRBs could shed new light on the origin of these radio waves and what exactly causes them, according to the newly submitted paper.
