Friday, January 6, 2017 at 12:08PM
Drew Wolfe

Mystery Radio Waves Are Coming From A (Dwarf) Galaxy Far, Far Away, Scientists Say

"Unexplained, short radio bursts from outer space have puzzled scientists since they were first detected nearly a decade ago."

"The elusive flashes — known as fast radio bursts, or FRBs — are extremely powerful and last only a few milliseconds. The way their frequencies are dispersed suggests they traveled from far outside our galaxy. About 18 have been detected to date. They've been called the 'most perplexing mystery in astronomy.'"

"Scientists are still grappling with why these bursts happen. But researchers have now pinpointed the source of one series of the FRBs — to a dwarf galaxy billions of light-years away from Earth."

"And locating the source of the mystery bursts could hold clues to what is causing them, according to Shami Chatterjee, an astrophysicist at Cornell University. He's the lead author in a paper recently published in Nature."

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