天文学家探测到史上最接近星系的空间信号

天文学家探测到史上最接近星系的空间信号

Fast Radio Bursts, or FRBs for short, are something of an anomaly for astronomers. We’ve been able to detect these powerful blasts of radio energy from distant locations in space, but nobody really knows for sure what causes them. FRBs are often one-hit wonders, appearing in an instant and then never are heard from again.

对天文学家来说，快速射电暴(简称FRB)是一种异常现象。我们已经能够探测到这些来自遥远空间的强大的无线电能量爆炸，但是没有人确切地知道是什么引起的。FRB经常是昙花一现的奇迹，出现在一瞬间，然后再也没有音讯。

One FRB in particular labeled FRB 121102, is famous for repeatedly showing up and researchers have been studying it for some time. Now, a new repeating FRB has appeared on scientists’ radars and it’s coming from a source that’s not all that far away from our own galaxy.

一种被称为FRB 121102的特殊FRB，因其反复出现而出名，研究人员对其进行了一段时间的研究。现在，一个新的重复FRB出现在科学家的雷达上，它来自一个离我们的星系不远的地方。

The new repeating FRB is known as 180916.J0158+65. It’s been traced to a galaxy that sits roughly half a billion light-years from Earth. That certainly sounds like a huge distance, but it’s actually only a fraction of the distance that other FRBs have been traced to, which makes it potentially exciting from a research perspective.

新的重复FRB被称为180916.J0158+65。它被追溯到一个距离地球约5亿光年的星系。这听起来当然像是一个遥远的距离，但实际上这只是其他FRB被追踪到的距离的一小部分，从研究的角度来看，这可能是令人兴奋的。

Its discovery is the subject of a new paper published in Nature.

它的发现是发表在《自然》杂志上的一篇新论文的主题。

“The FRB is among the closest yet seen and we even speculated that it could be a more conventional object in the outskirts of our own galaxy,” Mohit Bhardwaj, co-author of the work, said in a statement. “However, the observation proved that it’s in a relatively nearby galaxy, making it still a puzzling FRB but close enough to now study using many other telescopes.”

该研究的合著者Mohit Bhardwaj在一份声明中说:“FRB是我们所见过的距离最近的天体之一，我们甚至推测它可能是我们银河系外围的一个更传统的天体。”“然而，观测结果证明它在一个相对较近的星系中，这使它仍然是一个令人困惑的FRB，但现在已经足够近，可以用其他望远镜进行研究了。”