On the morning of July 25, the CHIME radio telescope in Canada picked up a burst of radio – or FRB, which stands for ‘fast radio burst’ – of low frequency, whose origin is unknown and is one of the strangest signals known to man.
CHIME is a powerful set of radio telescopes installed in British Columbia, Canada, and its name comes from the acronym ‘Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment’.
The fast radio bursts or FRB is a phenomenon known to astronomers and radio telescope operators. They consist of radio emissions of high intensity and are very short in duration – just a few milliseconds – that are perceptible on Earth. The first was detected in 2007 and its origin is still undetermined, although experts say that they come from other galaxies, probably from a black hole.
Although these FRB are relatively common, the signal detected by the CHIME radio telescope has a peculiarity that makes it unique: according to the report published in The Astronomer’s Telegram, an astronomical bulletin, the mysterious signal called FRB 180725A – so-called by the date it was detected – transmitted at very low frequencies: between 580 and 200 megahertz, the lowest detected until today.
Patrick Boyle, author of the research article and head of the CHIME program, maintains that to date they have not been able to identify a possible natural source of the low frequency FRB, although it appears as though it must have come from a very powerful source.
The expert Avi Loeb, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Center, speculates that it could have been a supernova – a star that explodes – a supermassive black hole or a pulsar, although he did not rule out that it could come from extraterrestrial intelligence.
To date, about forty FRBs have been detected around the world and they remain one of the most impenetrable mysteries in current astronomy. The CHIME radio telescope, on the other hand, is capable of detecting radio signals that occurred 6 billion years ago.
