Scientists detect 15 fast radio bursts from a distant galaxy

Breakthrough Listen, a scientific research program that was created by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner in July 2015 aimed to find life beyond Earth and now in the latest developments it has detected 15 brief but powerful fast radio bursts from a distant galaxy.

These fast radio bursts, or FRBs came from a mysterious body named FRB 121102 that was discovered in November 2, 2012 and hence the name. According to a study that described the findings, it is stated that this FRBs have been detected many times but this is only the first time this one has repeated.

More than 150 high-energy bursts have been observed coming from the object, which was identified last year as a dwarf galaxy about 3 billion light years from Earth.

The study, titled as "FRB 121102: Detection at 4 – 8 GHz band with Breakthrough Listen backend at Green Bank", was recently published in The Astronomers Telegraph.

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"Attempts to understand the mechanism that generates FRBs have made this galaxy a target of ongoing monitoring campaigns by instruments across the globe", said a report by Breakthrough.

"Possible explanations for FRBs range from outbursts from rotating neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields, to more speculative ideas that they are directed energy sources used by extra-terrestrial civilizations to power spacecraft."

This strange astronomical phenomena was first detected in 2007 by Duncan Lorimer and David Narkovic using the Parkes Telescope in Australia and to honor this noteworthy discovery, FRBs are aslo reffered to as “Lorimer Bursts”.