Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) astronomers announced that they have received repetitive radio signals from a galaxy billions of light-years from Earth. Scientists have yet to pinpoint the exact location of the radio waves, but they suspect the source may be neutron stars, formed from the collapsed cores of giant stars.
The researchers say the signals occur regularly and last for up to three seconds. These three seconds are a big deal, as most fast radio bursts or FRBs last only a few milliseconds.
“In this window, the team detected repetitive bursts of radio waves every 0.2 seconds in a clear periodic pattern, similar to a beating heart,” MIT said in a statement.
“Not only was it very long, lasting about three seconds, but there were extremely sharp periodic peaks that radiated like a heartbeat every second of the second,” said Daniele Michilli, a postdoctoral researcher at the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He said: “For the first time, we see that the signal itself is periodic.”
Data about these regular eruptions, including their frequencies and how they vary with where the source is located near Earth, can help researchers determine how fast the universe is expanding.
The announcement about the repetitive radio signals came after the first images of the universe from the James Webb Space Telescope were released earlier this week. These images show some galaxies that formed more than 13 billion years ago.
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