Finally, astronomers managed to identify the source of the mysterious short bursts of radio waves – it turned out to be an age dwarf galaxy located more than 3 billion light years from Earth.
In 2016, thanks to the development of high-speed data recording and real-time data analysis software, a total of nine flares were detected in a month, which was enough to find a source within a tenth of an arc second. Subsequently, the largest European and American radio interferometric arrays accurately identified it with an accuracy of one hundredth of an arc second, within an area of about 100 light years.
Deep imaging of the region with the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii has revealed an optically faint dwarf galaxy that continually emits low-level radio waves, typical of galaxies with an active nucleus that appears to hide a supermassive black hole at its center. It was also found that the galaxy has a low index of elements other than hydrogen and helium, which led astronomers to the idea that the galaxy was formed during the middle age of the universe.
According to astronomer Casey Lowe of the University of California, Berkeley, the presence of a fast radio burst in this type of dwarf galaxy suggests a link to other energetic events that occur in similar dwarf galaxies. He noted that extremely bright star bursts, called superluminal supernovae, may have taken place here, and the cause of these gamma-ray bursts could be highly magnetized and rapidly rotating neutron stars, also known as magnetars. Neutron stars are thought to be dense, compact objects created by supernova explosions that are capable of emitting periodic radio pulses as they rotate.
