Scientists discover mystery repeating 'fast radio bursts' blasted from 1.5 billion light years away

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last updated 9 January 2019

Something — or someone — is sending massive radio waves throughout the universe.

Researchers have rounded up dozens of "fast radio bursts" resonating throughout the universe, but have only seen two instances where waves repeatedly come from the same source, per a paper published Wednesday in Nature. Now, with these repetitive examples on the books, researchers think they may be able to figure out what's causing them.

Researchers first identified fast radio bursts in 2007 and have picked up 36 waves since, CBC News says. The bursts are just milliseconds long and travel to Earth from millions of light years away via some immense release of energy. Scientists speculate they could stem from black holes or exploded stars called neutron stars. But overall, they "don't know what can cause an emission that is that powerful," a study coauthor tells Mashable.

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Most bursts come from their own unique locations, but six of them recently "originat[ed] from a single position on the sky," the study writes. The whole series was detected by an enormous Canadian radio telescope called CHIME, which wasn't even operating at full capacity at the time, CNN says. So with the data from this discovery, and with CHIME fully activated now, researchers could discover "several more pieces in the puzzle" in the near future, a CHIME team member tells CNN.

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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.

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