EVN discovery deepens mystery over fast radio bursts

Telescopes in the European VLBI Network (EVN), one of the SKA pathfinder facilities, have observed a repeating Fast Radio Burst (FRB) in a spiral galaxy similar to our own.

This FRB is the closest to Earth ever localised and was found in a radically different environment to previous studies. The discovery, once again, changes researchers’ assumptions on the origins of these mysterious extragalactic events, which were first discovered just over 10 years ago and last for only a fraction of a second.

On 19th June 2019, eight telescopes from EVN teamed up to simultaneously observe a radio source. This source was originally discovered the year before by the CHIME telescope in Canada – another SKA pathfinder. The team, led by Benito Marcote from the Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC, was able to conduct a very high resolution observation with EVN. During five hours of observations the researchers detected four bursts, each lasting for less than two thousandths of a second.

The resolution reached through the combination of the telescopes across the globe, using a technique known as Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), a technique the SKA will make full use of once built, meant that the bursts could be precisely localised to a region of approximately only seven light years across. This localisation is comparable to an individual on Earth being able to distinguish a person on the Moon with the naked eye!

You can read more on the JIVE website.

Above: Eight antennas from the EVN in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Poland, Latvia and China were involved in observing a repeating Fast Radio Burst (FRB) in a spiral galaxy similar to our own.

Credit: JIVE

Source: JIVE