unexpected source of information
FRBs are of particular interest because they can be used as probes to study the large-scale structure of the universe. That’s why Calvin Leon, a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley, was so excited to analyze the Canadian data. chime musical instrument (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment). Although CHIME was built for other observations, it is sensitive to many of the wavelengths that make up the FRB. Unlike most radio telescopes, which focus on a small point in the sky, CHIME scans a vast area, allowing it to spot FRBs even though they rarely occur in the same place twice.
By combining data from several different telescopes, Leon was able to narrow down the likely location of the repeating FRB, first detected in February 2024, in the constellation Ursa Minor. When he and his CHIME collaborators further refined the location by averaging many bursts from the FRB, they discovered that the FRB’s origin lies on the outskirts of a distant galaxy that disappeared long ago. . Why do magnetars exist in dead galaxies where no new stars are forming?
This is the first time that an FRB has been discovered in such a location, and it is also the farthest from the Milky Way. CHIME currently has two online outrigger radio arrays installed. This is the companion telescope to the original CHIME radio array in British Columbia. A third array went live this week in Northern California, and Leon said it should allow astronomers to better pinpoint the sources of this and other FRBs. Data has already been ingested from outriggers in West Virginia, confirming published locations with 20x increased accuracy.
“This result casts doubt on existing theories linking the origin of FRBs to phenomena in star-forming galaxies,” said co-author Vishwangi Shah, a graduate student at McGill University. If confirmed, FRB 20240209A would be only the second FRB associated with a globular cluster. ”
V. Shah et al., Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2025. DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ad9ddc (About DOI).
T. Eftekhari et al., Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2025. DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ad9de2 (About DOI).
