WVU Undergrad Finds Six-Year-Old Radio Burst Data that Could Open New Astrophysics Field

An astronomical research team at West Virginia University (WVU), discovered an overlooked gem of a radio burst recorded with CSIRO's Parkes telescope and it has now been reported in the online journal Science Express.

Undergraduate David Narkevik was re-analyzing data taken six years ago with Parkes telescope at WVU when he made the discovery of previously misunderstood data.

Narkevik's shocking find of data from CSIRO's Parkes radio telescope was that of the detection of a huge burst of radio energy from out in the distant universe. The detection of this radio burst could open up a new field in astrophysics. The radio burst appears to have originated at least one-and-a-half billion light-years away but was startlingly strong. The burst lasted 5 milliseconds.

"Normally the kind of cosmic activity we're looking for at this distance would be very faint but this was so bright that it saturated the equipment," said Professor Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University in Melbourne [saturation of a telescope results in a Bake Out].

The discovery of the radio burst is similar in importance to the discovery of gamma-ray bursts in the 1970s. Then, military satellites for the first time revealed flashes of gamma-rays appearing all over the sky. The one kind of gamma-ray called long-period bursts was later identified as supernovas of massive stars, with the associated formation of black holes.

At the time the Parkes data was originally recorded, the burst was so bright that it was dismissed as man-made radio interference. The amount of power that the burst put out was equivalent to a large power station running for two billion billion years

"The burst may have been produced by an exotic event such as the collision of two neutron stars or be the last gasp of a black hole as it evaporates completely," said Professor Duncan Lorimer, who is the lead researcher on the team at WVU.

Although only one burst has been found, calculations permit the astronomers to estimate how often such bursts occur.

"We'd expect to see a few bursts over the whole sky every day," said Dr John Reynolds, Officer in Charge at CSIRO's Parkes Observatory.

"A new telescope being built in Western Australia will be ideal for finding more of these rare, transient events...The Australian SKA Pathfinder, which is going to be built by 2012, will have a very wide field of view-be able to see a very large piece of sky-which is exactly what you want for this kind of work," he said.

In the mean time, researchers at WVU--undergrads and professors alike--will be combing the archived data from the Parkes telescope for more radio bursts of the new type.

"Mysterious energy burst stuns astronomers," The Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation.