fast radio bursts – Quanta Magazine

The Year in Physics

Michael Moyer — Wed, 23 Dec 2020 17:06:57 +0000

By now you’ve probably heard the original quarantine-genius story: Isaac Newton, having fled the plague, revolutionized mathematics and reinvented physics. In a pandemic-afflicted year like 2020, it’s natural to hope for some parallel silver lining. Maybe another prodigy’s ideas are being given the time and space to gestate, and who knows what wonders await. The dour among us might point out that...

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A Surprise Discovery Points to the Source of Fast Radio Bursts

Shannon Hall — Thu, 11 Jun 2020 13:25:36 +0000

On the morning of April 28, a newly built radio telescope was monitoring the quiet skies over British Columbia when it caught the flash that would change everything. One of the telescope’s duties was to search for fast radio bursts — millisecond-long blips that, until then, had always come from distant galaxies. No one knew for sure what could create such short explosions of radio waves...

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Virginia Trimble Has Seen the Stars

Elizabeth Landau — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 17:26:53 +0000

Beginning in 1991, Virginia Trimble read every single astronomy article published in 23 different journals. She would then write an annual “year in review” article, which astronomers everywhere used as a window into the rest of the field at large. Her characteristic dry humor came through even in the first installment: “Science, notoriously, progresses amoeba-like, thrusting out pseudopods in...

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With a Second Repeating Radio Burst, Astronomers Close In on an Explanation

Joshua Sokol — Thu, 28 Feb 2019 16:00:48 +0000

Between this past Christmas and New Year’s Day, Brian Metzger realized he had his home to himself — no emails coming in, no classes to teach — and maybe, just maybe, the glimmer of an answer to one of astronomy’s most stubborn mysteries. He chased hard after the lead, worried a little error could unravel everything or that someone else would put together the same pieces first. “You’re racing a...

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Astronomers Trace Radio Burst to Extreme Cosmic Neighborhood

Katia Moskvitch — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 18:00:36 +0000

On Christmas Eve 2016, Andrew Seymour, an astronomer at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, kissed his 4-year-old daughter, Cora Lee, goodnight, telling her he was off to track Santa. He walked to the well-worn telescope, occasionally passing revelers riding horses through the empty streets — a common sight in Arecibo during the holidays. Sometimes a lonely firework would light up in the...

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