Scientists Zoom In On Fast Radio Bursts, The Most Mysterious Signals In Space

An international team of astronomers traced a repeating fast radio burst to a region of star formation in a dim dwarf galaxy 3 billion light-years away. Nobody knows what causes fast radio bursts - brief, bizarre radio wave beams that emit more energy in a fraction of a millisecond than the sun does all day. But scientists just got closer than ever before to the source of one of these enigmatic signals. In research presented Wednesday at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society, an international team of astronomers traced a repeating fast radio burst to a region of star formation in a dim dwarf galaxy 3 billion light-years away. There, they said, the high energy beam is being savagely twisted by a powerful magnetic field amid a dense cloud of hot, ionized gas. The finding helps illuminate the extreme environment these radio bursts call home. But scientists are still scratching their heads over what could cause such a mighty blast.