New type of Fast Radio Burst discovered in Green Bank Telescope data

Eight ultra-fast bursts lasted only ten millionths of a second or less

Artist’s impression of the discovery of microsecond Fast Radio Bursts being observed by the Green Bank Telescope. Incoming radio waves are shown as white, red, and orange streaks that follow each other in rapid succession. The long red streaks are the previously known millisecond flashes. (c) Daniëlle Futselaar/www.artsource.nl

An international team of researchers have discovered radio pulses from the distant universe that last only millionths of a second. They found these microsecond bursts after a meticulous examination of archival data from the National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Telescope. It’s unclear how the ultrafast bursts were created. The researchers published their findings in Nature Astronomy.

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Five Decades of Groundbreaking Millimeter Astronomy—From Discovering Molecules in Space to Imaging New Solar Systems

Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) have awarded the 2023 Karl G. Jansky Lectureship to Dr. Paul A. Vanden Bout, Senior Scientist, Emeritus at NRAO. The Jansky Lectureship is an honor established by the trustees of AUI to recognize outstanding contributions to the advancement of radio astronomy.

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Green Bank, WV location of some of the most fundamental discoveries in astrophysics and astronomy

American Physical Society Recognizes GBO as Historic Site
Green Bank Observatory campus, photo credit Jay Young.

The American Physical Society has designated the National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Observatory (GBO) as a Historic Site, recognizing it as the location of some of the most fundamental discoveries in astrophysics and astronomy.

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Cosmic Collision: Space Nessie Spawns Newborn Star

Deep in the depths of our galactic ocean, astronomers have observed triggered star formation in the Nessie Nebula.

Nessie’s legendary shape, revealed in an image from the Spitzer Telescope. The expanding bubble is the yellow, ring-shaped object at the far right. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. Of Wisconsin.
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SETI, Breakthrough Listen, and Cornell University Search for Extraterrestrial Pulses in GBT Data

Image credit Jee Seymour.

Akshay Suresh, a graduate student at Cornell University, spearheads an extraordinary scientific endeavor — a groundbreaking mission to uncover periodic signals emanating from the core of the Milky Way called the Breakthrough Listen Investigation for Periodic Spectral Signals (BLIPSS). Such repetitive patterns could be the key to unlocking the mysteries of extraterrestrial intelligence in our galaxy. Suresh and his co-authors detail the project’s results thus far in a paper accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal, “A 4–8 GHz Galactic Center Search for Periodic Technosignatures.”

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