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Still from a NASA animation of a magnetar emitting a powerful flare. (NASA)

24 September 2022
By MICHELLE STARR

We have detected a strange new signal from across the chasm of time and space.

A repeating fast radio burst source detected last year was recorded spitting out a whopping 1,863 bursts over 82 hours, amid a total of 91 hours of observation.

This hyperactive behavior has allowed scientists to characterize not just the galaxy that hosts the source and its distance from us, but also what the source is.

The object, named FRB 20201124A, was detected with the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) in China and described in a new paper led by astronomer Heng Xu of Peking University in China.

 

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