Fast radio burst source identification challenged
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.029621
New Scientist : Last week researchers led by Evan Keane of the Jodrell Bank Observatory in the UK announced that they had identified the source of a fast radio burst (FRB). An FRB is an extremely bright flash of radio waves that lasts for only a fraction of a second. The researchers identified the source by looking at the afterglow of the FRB. But Peter Williams of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and his colleagues used the Very Large Array in Socorro, New Mexico, to look at the galaxy and found that it is glowing again. That shouldn’t happen for an FRB, which most scientists believe stems from a one-time cataclysmic event. Williams’ group suggests that the galaxy likely contains an active galactic nucleus, a black hole–powered phenomenon that glows brightly in a range of wavelengths.