The researchers concluded that fast radio bursts (FRBs) are not accompanied by neutrino fluxes, making these “signals” even more mysterious.
Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, have haunted scientists for many years. Such a "signal" is a single radio pulse of unknown nature with a duration of milliseconds. The burst energy, according to the researchers, is equivalent to the release into outer space of the energy that our star emits for several tens of thousands of years.
At the same time, there is no obvious connection between FRB and the Sun, Earth, or any other objects of our system. Researchers are more often inclined to believe that the sources of fast radio bursts may be in another planetary system of the Milky Way or even in another galaxy. Experts believe that FRBs can be generated by black holes or gamma-ray bursts.
Now American astronomer Justin Vandenbroucke and his colleagues have tested this hypothesis. Scientists were guided by the idea that a supernova explosion or a "dining" black hole is accompanied by powerful emissions of neutrinos - neutral fundamental particles with half-integer spin, which participate only in weak and gravitational interactions. Thus, if FRBs are associated with supernovae and black holes, they will be accompanied by powerful neutrino fluxes.
The researchers used the IceCube neutrino telescope installed at the Earth's South Pole. In total, scientists tracked 30 fast radio bursts, among which there were seventeen signals generated by one source. During the experiment, none of the detectors recorded the traces of the neutrino flux, which puts the main hypotheses of FRB production into question.
Drilling tower and hose reel for drilling "IceCube" wells. year 2009. / wikipedia
The results obtained can certainly provide invaluable assistance to science, since they sharply narrow the "circle of suspects". On the other hand, these observations make fast radio bursts even more strange and mysterious, because now it is even less clear what could cause them. To rule out the popular version, built around black holes, scientists intend to conduct another session of observations of the FRB.
Earlier, we will remind, other astronomers said that three billion light years away from us the mysterious source FRB 121102 "woke up" again and telescopes again began to observe fast radio bursts of unknown nature. Scientists were surprised by the fact that the frequency of the bursts was approximately twice as high as the previous pulses from FRB 121102.
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Ilya Vedmedenko
