Rapid radio blasts are extremely short and powerful emission of radio waves beyond the Milky Way (usually). For more than a decade, 1,000 of these have been traced, but only a handful of people have been traced to their main galaxies. Thanks to Hubble, we can now add five more to the next teams. At one thousandth of a second, FRBs generate energy like the sun, but they are so short that their source is hard to find, so leave out what kind of object could be causing them. Identifying these events gives us a clue to their causes.
Now, astronomers have not only been able to detect five FRBs in their host galaxy, but have also provided the highest resolution images of this galaxy and the approximate position of the FRBs between the spiral arms of this cosmic island. Incredible searches will be published in the Astrophysical Journal. Lead author Alexandra Mannings of the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in a statement, “Our results are new and exciting. This is the first high-resolution view of the FRB population and Hubble reveals that five of them are localized near or above the spiral arm of the galaxy.”
“Most galaxies are large, relatively young and still form. The FRB position is because Hubble has such a large resolution. “FRBs are divided into two broad categories, repeatable and non-repetitive. The FRBs in this study include FRB 180924, the first non-recurring FRBs to follow its source galaxy. The exact mechanism by which these glowing-and-you-miss-it-wireless waves propagate is still unclear, but this study supports the leading hypothesis that the source is a magnetic stimulus. Magnets are special types of neutron stars, with an incredible magnetic field causing the core to collapse by certain supernovae.
When these stars are lit they emit a short but strong emission and if the alignment is correct we can catch this kind of emission from the earth. Finding the source of this emission in large-sized galaxies reinforces this notion because they have the potential to have large populations of magnets. “Because of their strong magnetic fields, magnets are quite undesirable,” says Wen-fai Fong, co-author of Northwestern University.
