Rapid bursts of radio waves from millions to billions of light-years away can be used as probes to study the halos of hazy gases that are hard to see.

Rapid bursts of radio waves from millions to billions of light-years away can be used as probes to study the halos of the hard-to-see hazy gas that surrounds closer galaxies.

These pulses, known as fast radio bursts (FRBs), slow down as they transit through the gas shrouding the galaxy between their source and Earth. This has the added consequence of their radio frequency scattering.

Using this to investigate the galaxy’s gaseous halo, researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) found twice as much matter as previously believed in the envelope surrounding the galaxy. This has implications for how this collection of stars and planets evolves over long periods of time.

Astronomers looked at a sample of 474 distant FRBs with the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) which confirmed that the 24 FRBs intercepted by the galactic halo did indeed slow down compared to the others that traveled to Earth unimpeded. Thus, this effect can be used to investigate the material that the FRB passes through.

The use of FRBs farther from outside our galaxy to investigate the massive gas pools surrounding other galaxies has revealed some surprises. Astronomers found that there was more matter in the gaseous halo than previously believed, about twice as much as theoretical models predicted.

“Our study shows that FRBs can act as an awl of all matter between our radio telescope and the radio wave source,” Tolman Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Astronomy at Caltech, Liam Connor, said in a statement. “We have used fast radio bursts to illuminate the halos of galaxies near the Milky Way and measure their hidden matter.”

“This gas reservoir is huge,” Connor said. “If the human eye could see a spherical halo surrounding the nearby Andromeda galaxy, it would appear a thousand times larger than the moon.”

Because these gaseous halos are remnants of the same material used to form stars and planets, deeper investigation could lead to a better understanding of how galaxies evolve over a period of billions of years.

Although researchers are currently unsure about the origin of the FRB, first detected in 2007, they believe that waves of electromagnetic radiation lasting from a fraction of a millisecond to several milliseconds are emitted by rapidly rotating magnetic dead stars called magnetars. Evidence of this relationship was provided in 2020 when the Caltech Survey instrument for Transient Astronomical Radio Emission 2 (STARE2) teamed up with CHIME to detect a large FRB erupting in the Milky Way.

Since their discovery in 2007, hundreds of FRBs have been observed and these disclosures are expected to continue to roll in thanks, in part, to Caltech’s Deep Synoptic Array 110 dish, or DSA-110. The project has identified several FRBs and traced them back to their galaxy of origin. Caltech scientists have plans to build a larger array of telescopes in the coming years that will consist of 2,000 disks. Named DSA-2000, the project will be the most powerful radio observatory ever built and be able to detect and identify thousands of FRBs and their sources every year.

“This is just the beginning,” said assistant professor of astronomy at Caltech, Vikram Ravi. “As we discover more FRBs, our technique can be applied to study individual halos of different sizes and in different environments, tackling the unsolved problem of how matter is distributed in the universe.”

News Summary:

• Fast radio bursts can reveal undiscovered cosmic stuff
• Check all the news and articles from the latest Space news updates.

#Rapid #bursts #radio #waves #millions #billions #lightyears #probes #study #halos #hazy #gases #hard