In an unprecedented development, astronomers claimed that the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) recorded a very powerful radio signal originating in our own galaxy on 28th April. Reportedly, this is the first-ever Fast Radio Burst (FRB) in the Milky Way galaxy.
The powerful radio signal was detected when SGR 1935+2154, a dead star registered for the radio observatories worldwide with a millisecond-long burst of extremely bright radio waves.
Shrinivas Kulkarni, an astronomer at CalTech said, “Something like this has never been seen before. The signal may have originated due to massive shifting of gravitational forces causing a starquake or magnetar flare, that may have caused a disturbance in the magnetic field surrounding the dead star.”
It is worth noting that CHIME is a revolutionary radio telescope. It consists of four cylindrical reflectors and 256 dual-polarization antennas. To search for Fast Radio Bursts, the telescope continuously scans 1024 separate beams on the sky 24/7.
This detection will help astronomers untangle some thorny questions in the field of astrophysics.
To recap, Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are one of the mysterious phenomena in the cosmos. They are highly intense and energetic flares of radio waves lasting for a thousandth of a second. FRBs were first reported in 2007. But their origin is still unknown.
