• DOI:10.1126/science.1236789
• Corpus ID: 206548502

A Population of Fast Radio Bursts at Cosmological Distances

@article{Thornton2013APO,
  title={A Population of Fast Radio Bursts at Cosmological Distances},
  author={Dan Philip Grant Thornton and Ben W. Stappers and Matthew Bailes and Benjamin R. Barsdell and Samuel Bates and N. D. Ramesh Bhat and Marta Burgay and Sarah Burke-Spolaor and David J. Champion and P. Coster and Nicolo' D'Amico and Andrew Jameson and S Johnston and Michael J. Keith and Michael Kramer and Lina Levin and Sabrina Milia and Cherry Ng and Andrea Possenti and Willem van Straten},
  journal={Science},
  year={2013},
  volume={341},
  pages={53 - 56}
}

• D. Thornton, B. Stappers, +17 authors W. van Straten
• Published 5 July 2013
• Physics
• Science

Mysterious Radio Bursts It has been uncertain whether single, short, and bright bursts of radio emission that have been observed are celestial or terrestrial in origin. Thornton et al. (p. 53; see the Perspective by Cordes) report the detection of four nonrepeating radio transient events with millisecond duration in data from the 64-meter Parkes radio telescope in Australia. The properties of these radio bursts indicate that they had their origin outside our galaxy, but it is not possible to tell what caused them. Because the intergalactic medium affects the characteristics of the bursts, it will be possible to use them to study its properties. Radio telescope data revealed four short, extragalactic, nonrepeating bursts of radio emission whose source is unknown. [Also see Perspective by Cordes] Searches for transient astrophysical sources often reveal unexpected classes of objects that are useful physical laboratories. In a recent survey for pulsars and fast transients, we have uncovered four millisecond-duration radio transients all more than 40° from the Galactic plane. The bursts’ properties indicate that they are of celestial rather than terrestrial origin. Host galaxy and intergalactic medium models suggest that they have cosmological redshifts of 0.5 to 1 and distances of up to 3 gigaparsecs. No temporally coincident x- or gamma-ray signature was identified in association with the bursts. Characterization of the source population and identification of host galaxies offers an opportunity to determine the baryonic content of the universe.