Researchers Find Mysterious 'Ghost' Radio Emission That Lasted 25 Years
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - An extremely bright source of radio emissions was spotted by researchers that blazed into existence in the 1990s and then faded out over next 25 years.
Astronomers have revealed the night sky could be full of 'ghost' objects.
The say the objects could be commonplace.
Law, an assistant research astronomer in the Department of Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, is leading the search to scour vast amounts of data in search of bright objects that disappear, never to be seen again, Daily Mail reported.
Based on the extreme brightness of the radio source and the type of galaxy in which the flare-up occurred, he believes the find was the afterglow of the explosion of a massive star.
This would have emitted an undetected long-duration gamma-ray burst.
These are among the most intense flashes in the universe because much of their explosive energy is in a tight beam, rather like the light from a lighthouse.
'We believe we are the first to find evidence for gamma-ray bursts that could not be detected with a gamma-ray telescope,' said Law, an assistant research astronomer in the Department of Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley.
He says the strange 'orphan' signals could be relatively common.
'These are known as 'orphan' gamma-ray bursts, and many more such orphan GRBs are expected in new radio surveys that are now underway.'
Gamma-ray bursts, such as that detected last year accompanying gravitational waves from the merger of two neutron stars, are rarely seen because the source of the gamma rays - a relativistic jet of material emerging from the explosive merger - must be pointing directly at Earth.
