Ever since the first fast radio burst was discovered in 2007, scientists have been racing to understand the unusual flashes of radio waves emanating from extremely distant locations.
Some of these signals blip at astonishingly regular intervals, while some blast out extremely powerful flashes all at once, lighting up ground-based radio dishes like a Christmas tree for mere milliseconds.
Some FRBs emit as much energy in a fraction of a second as the Sun does in a few days. One signal that astonished astronomers earlier this year had been pulsing every 20 minutes since at least 1988.
And while scientists can still only hazard a guess as to what's behind them, the latest fast radio burst that was just discovered is only adding to the mystery — and highlighting just how much we still have to learn about the celestial phenomenon.
As detailed in a new study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society this week, researchers spotted a "never-before-seen" burst dubbed FRB 20220912A using the SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array, a collection of 42 antennae stretching out across the Cascade Mountains in California.
Over two months, the team detected 35 bursts from a single source. Unlike previous FRBs that repeated over time, the team noticed that the signal dropped in the center frequency of the bursts, kind of like a "celestial slide whistle," as CNN put it.
Despite their best efforts, the team wasn't able to detect a regular timing between each of the bursts.
To read more, click here.