Energy bursts stuns astronomers
The Parkes radio telescope
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Friday, 28, Sep 2007 03:28
A startlingly-strong burst of radio energy in the far reaches of the universe has puzzled astronomers.
The five millisecond radio burst was discovered by a team using CSIRO's Parkes telescope and was at first dismissed as man-made radio interference as it was so bright.
Writing in the online journal Science Express, the researchers believe it originated at least one and a half billion light years away.
Professor Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University in Melbourne said the usual kind of activity researchers look for at this distance would be very faint, "but this was so bright it saturated the equipment".
The amount of energy it put out was equivalent to a large (2000MW) power station running for two billion, billion years.
"The burst may have been produced by an exotic event such as the collision of two neutron stars or be the last gasp of a black hole as it evaporates completely," said assistant professor Duncan Lorimer of West Virginia University.
Researchers will now trawl through archive data from the Parkes telescope for more radio bursts.
A new telescope being built in Western Australia – the Australian SKA Pathfinder – is being hailed as ideal for spotting such bursts in the future.