科學(xué)家探測(cè)到更多來(lái)自深空的重復(fù)無(wú)線電信號(hào)

科學(xué)家探測(cè)到更多來(lái)自深空的重復(fù)無(wú)線電信號(hào)

Fast radio bursts (FRBs), mysterious high-energy astrophysical phenoma that have defied explanation, have been blamed on everything from aliens to microwave ovens. They are incredibly strong signals that have puzzling mathematical regularity, and scientists believe they are coming from deep space.

快速射電暴(FRBs)是一種神秘的高能天體物理現(xiàn)象，無(wú)法解釋，人們將其歸咎于從外星人到微波爐的一切事物。它們是令人難以置信的強(qiáng)信號(hào)，具有令人困惑的數(shù)學(xué)規(guī)律性，科學(xué)家們相信它們來(lái)自深太空。

But the presence of a new type of FRB may help astronomers understand how they work and where they might be coming from.

但是一種新型FRB的存在可能會(huì)幫助天文學(xué)家了解它們是如何工作的以及它們可能來(lái)自哪里。

The CHIME Pathfinder telescope is located at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in British Columbia, Canada. (Photo: Andre Recnik [CC BY-SA 4.0]/Wikimedia Commons)

A collaborative team of researchers using a telescope in Canada recently detected a special batch of repeating FRBs from space, bringing to 10 the number of this kind of of FRB that have been discovered. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of regular FRBs have also been found.

最近，加拿大的一個(gè)研究團(tuán)隊(duì)利用望遠(yuǎn)鏡發(fā)現(xiàn)了一批特殊的重復(fù)FRB，這使得已經(jīng)發(fā)現(xiàn)的這種FRB的數(shù)量達(dá)到了10個(gè)。數(shù)十個(gè)，或許數(shù)百個(gè)常規(guī)FRB也被發(fā)現(xiàn)。

These millisecond-long bursts of energy, which were only first discovered in 2007, seem to occur all over the sky. The discovery of repeating FRBs matter because they're easier to track long-term than one-offs, which flare and are never seen again.

這些毫秒級(jí)的能量爆發(fā)，直到2007年才首次被發(fā)現(xiàn)，似乎遍布天空。重復(fù)FRB的發(fā)現(xiàn)很重要，因?yàn)樗鼈儽纫淮涡缘母菀组L(zhǎng)期跟蹤，而一次性的耀斑再也不會(huì)出現(xiàn)。

The researchers' work was published on Cornell's arXiv.org, an electronic preprint repository, and submitted to Astrophysical Journal.

研究人員的成果發(fā)表在康奈爾大學(xué)的arXiv.org網(wǎng)站上，這是一個(gè)電子預(yù)印庫(kù)，并提交給《天體物理學(xué)雜志》。

Their work is based at the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) radio telescope in British Columbia, which looks at the sky in a whole new way. It's range is from 400 to 800 megahertz MHz, whereas previously discovered FRBs had radio frequencies around 1,400 MHz.

他們的工作是在加拿大不列顛哥倫比亞省的氫強(qiáng)度測(cè)繪實(shí)驗(yàn)(CHIME)射電望遠(yuǎn)鏡上完成的，該望遠(yuǎn)鏡以一種全新的方式觀察天空。它的范圍從400到800兆赫茲，而之前發(fā)現(xiàn)的FRB有大約1400兆赫茲的無(wú)線電頻率。

Astronomers now believe that FRBs may be more common than previously thought but that our technology hasn't caught up yet to detect all of them.

天文學(xué)家現(xiàn)在認(rèn)為，F(xiàn)RB可能比以前認(rèn)為的更為普遍，但我們的技術(shù)還沒(méi)有趕上去探測(cè)所有的FRB。

Parkes Observatory began detecting frequent radio bursts in 1998. (Photo: CSIRO)

While scientists still haven't pinpointed whether or not FRBs all come from the same type of source or are vastly different in origin, scientists in Australia believe they discovered one source back in 2015.

雖然科學(xué)家們還沒(méi)有確定FRB是否都來(lái)自同一類型的來(lái)源，或者它們的來(lái)源有很大的不同，但澳大利亞的科學(xué)家認(rèn)為他們?cè)?015年就發(fā)現(xiàn)了一種FRB來(lái)源。

Interestingly, the search for this burst's source might also have solved another riddle of the universe: the so-called "missing matter" problem. There should be much more matter in our universe than scientists have been able to detect so far, at least according to current models of the universe. This fast radio burst showed a lot of "wear and tear," however — and that's evidence that it must have bumped into lots of matter during its journey through the space between galaxies.

有趣的是，尋找這次爆炸的源頭可能還解決了宇宙的另一個(gè)謎題:所謂的“失蹤物質(zhì)”問(wèn)題。至少根據(jù)目前的宇宙模型，我們的宇宙中應(yīng)該有比科學(xué)家迄今所能探測(cè)到的更多的物質(zhì)。然而，這個(gè)快速的射電暴顯示出了大量的“磨損”——這也證明了它在穿越星系間空間的過(guò)程中一定撞上了大量的物質(zhì)。

This could be the missing matter that scientists have been looking for, invisible ions hidden in the darkness of intergalactic space.

這可能就是科學(xué)家們一直在尋找的失蹤物質(zhì)——隱藏在星系間黑暗空間中的看不見(jiàn)的離子。

These are all exciting finds, proof that there's a lot of good science that can come from studying these mystifying signals, whether they lead to aliens, merging neutron stars or something else entirely.

這些都是令人興奮的發(fā)現(xiàn)，證明了通過(guò)研究這些神秘的信號(hào)，無(wú)論它們是否會(huì)導(dǎo)致外星人、中子星合并或其他什么東西，都可以得出很多好的科學(xué)結(jié)論。