科学家探测到更多来自深空的重复无线电信号

科学家探测到更多来自深空的重复无线电信号

Fast radio bursts (FRBs), mysterious high-energy astrophysical phenoma that have defied explanation, have been blamed on everything from aliens to microwave ovens. They are incredibly strong signals that have puzzling mathematical regularity, and scientists believe they are coming from deep space.

快速射电暴(FRBs)是一种神秘的高能天体物理现象，无法解释，人们将其归咎于从外星人到微波炉的一切事物。它们是令人难以置信的强信号，具有令人困惑的数学规律性，科学家们相信它们来自深太空。

But the presence of a new type of FRB may help astronomers understand how they work and where they might be coming from.

但是一种新型FRB的存在可能会帮助天文学家了解它们是如何工作的以及它们可能来自哪里。

The CHIME Pathfinder telescope is located at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in British Columbia, Canada. (Photo: Andre Recnik [CC BY-SA 4.0]/Wikimedia Commons)

A collaborative team of researchers using a telescope in Canada recently detected a special batch of repeating FRBs from space, bringing to 10 the number of this kind of of FRB that have been discovered. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of regular FRBs have also been found.

最近，加拿大的一个研究团队利用望远镜发现了一批特殊的重复FRB，这使得已经发现的这种FRB的数量达到了10个。数十个，或许数百个常规FRB也被发现。

These millisecond-long bursts of energy, which were only first discovered in 2007, seem to occur all over the sky. The discovery of repeating FRBs matter because they're easier to track long-term than one-offs, which flare and are never seen again.

这些毫秒级的能量爆发，直到2007年才首次被发现，似乎遍布天空。重复FRB的发现很重要，因为它们比一次性的更容易长期跟踪，而一次性的耀斑再也不会出现。

The researchers' work was published on Cornell's arXiv.org, an electronic preprint repository, and submitted to Astrophysical Journal.

研究人员的成果发表在康奈尔大学的arXiv.org网站上，这是一个电子预印库，并提交给《天体物理学杂志》。

Their work is based at the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) radio telescope in British Columbia, which looks at the sky in a whole new way. It's range is from 400 to 800 megahertz MHz, whereas previously discovered FRBs had radio frequencies around 1,400 MHz.

他们的工作是在加拿大不列颠哥伦比亚省的氢强度测绘实验(CHIME)射电望远镜上完成的，该望远镜以一种全新的方式观察天空。它的范围从400到800兆赫兹，而之前发现的FRB有大约1400兆赫兹的无线电频率。

Astronomers now believe that FRBs may be more common than previously thought but that our technology hasn't caught up yet to detect all of them.

天文学家现在认为，FRB可能比以前认为的更为普遍，但我们的技术还没有赶上去探测所有的FRB。

Parkes Observatory began detecting frequent radio bursts in 1998. (Photo: CSIRO)

While scientists still haven't pinpointed whether or not FRBs all come from the same type of source or are vastly different in origin, scientists in Australia believe they discovered one source back in 2015.

虽然科学家们还没有确定FRB是否都来自同一类型的来源，或者它们的来源有很大的不同，但澳大利亚的科学家认为他们在2015年就发现了一种FRB来源。

Interestingly, the search for this burst's source might also have solved another riddle of the universe: the so-called "missing matter" problem. There should be much more matter in our universe than scientists have been able to detect so far, at least according to current models of the universe. This fast radio burst showed a lot of "wear and tear," however — and that's evidence that it must have bumped into lots of matter during its journey through the space between galaxies.

有趣的是，寻找这次爆炸的源头可能还解决了宇宙的另一个谜题:所谓的“失踪物质”问题。至少根据目前的宇宙模型，我们的宇宙中应该有比科学家迄今所能探测到的更多的物质。然而，这个快速的射电暴显示出了大量的“磨损”——这也证明了它在穿越星系间空间的过程中一定撞上了大量的物质。

This could be the missing matter that scientists have been looking for, invisible ions hidden in the darkness of intergalactic space.

这可能就是科学家们一直在寻找的失踪物质——隐藏在星系间黑暗空间中的看不见的离子。

These are all exciting finds, proof that there's a lot of good science that can come from studying these mystifying signals, whether they lead to aliens, merging neutron stars or something else entirely.

这些都是令人兴奋的发现，证明了通过研究这些神秘的信号，无论它们是否会导致外星人、中子星合并或其他什么东西，都可以得出很多好的科学结论。