Latest news with #radiowaves
Yahoo
30-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists discover ancient radio signals from distant galaxy cluster
Astronomers studying a distant galaxy cluster stumbled upon ancient radio signals that might hold clues to the formation of the early universe. While studying the distant galaxy cluster known as SpARCS1049, astronomers detected faint mysterious radio waves, according to a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and available on the pre-print server Xrxiv. The discovered radio waves, which took 10 billion years to reach Earth, originated from a vast region of space filled with high-energy particles and magnetic fields. These vast clouds of high-energy particles are known as a mini-halo. A mini-halo has never been detected this deep into space before, according to the study. Astronomers Make Groundbreaking Discovery About Largest Comet Ever Observed Flying Through Deep Space Mini-halos are described in the study as faint groups of charged particles. These groups are known to emit both radio and X-ray waves. Mini-halos are typically found in clusters between galaxies. Read On The Fox News App Roland Timmerman of the Institute for Computational Cosmology of Durham University and co-author of the study said in a statement in how these particles are important for the creation of our universe. "It's astonishing to find such a strong radio signal at this distance," Timmerman said. "It means these energetic particles and the processes creating them have been shaping galaxy clusters for nearly the entire history of the universe." Scientists Detect Mysterious Radio Waves Coming From Beneath Antarctica's Ice The astronomers analyzed data from the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope. The LOFAR is made up of 100,000 small antennas across eight European countries, according to the study. The team of astronomers believes there are two causes for the makeup of these mini-halos. According to the study, the first explanation is supermassive black holes found at the heart of galaxies. These black holes can release high-energy particles into space. The astronomers are perplexed as to how these particles would escape such a powerful black hole to create these clusters. The second explanation, according to the study, is cosmic particle collisions. These cosmic particle collisions occur when charged particles filled with hot plasma collide at near-light speeds. These collisions smash apart, allowing the high-energy particles to be observed from Earth. According to the study, astronomers now believe that this discovery suggests that either black holes or particle collisions have been energizing galaxies earlier than previously believed. New telescopes being developed like the Square Kilometer Array will eventually let astronomers detect even more faint signals. Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo from the University of Montreal and co-lead author of the study said in a statement she believes this is just the beginning to the wonders of space. "We are just scratching the surface of how energetic the early universe really was," Hlavacek-Larrondo said in the statement. "This discovery gives us a new window into how galaxy clusters grow and evolve, driven by both black holes and high-energy particle physics."Original article source: Scientists discover ancient radio signals from distant galaxy cluster
Yahoo
26-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Zombie NASA satellite emits powerful radio pulse after 60 years of silence
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Last year, scientists detected a mysterious, powerful burst of radio waves originating from within our galaxy. Now, astronomers think it was caused by a long-dead NASA satellite — but they're not sure how it happened. Relay 2 blasted off in 1964, but the communication satellite went offline in 1967 after its two onboard transponders failed. Almost 60 years later, in June 2024, the satellite produced an unexpected signal, the researchers said in a new preprint study, which was posted June 13 to the server arXiv and has not yet been peer reviewed. "This was an incredibly powerful radio pulse that vastly outshone everything else in the sky for a very short amount of time," study lead author Clancy James, an associate professor at Curtin University's Institute of Radio Astronomy in Australia, told New Scientist. The pulse lasted just 30 nanoseconds, which doesn't match any of the dead satellite's systems — ruling out the possibility of a deliberate transmission, according to the preprint. Instead, James and his colleagues think that either a micrometeorite impact or a buildup of electricity triggered the burst of radio waves. The researchers detected the strange pulse while scanning the sky for radio bursts with the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) — a radio telescope in Western Australia comprising 36 identical dish antennae. Radio bursts are intense blasts of radio waves that can unleash as much energy within a fraction of a second as the sun emits in three days. They usually come from distant galaxies, and in particular from rare, massive galaxies, according to a 2024 Nature article. But the signal James and his colleagues intercepted in June 2024 did not come from a far-flung galaxy; it originated in the Milky Way. The pulse started so close to Earth that ASKAP couldn't focus on it, in the same way that a phone camera sometimes struggles to focus on nearby objects. Related: Can we refuel 'dead' satellites in space? Bold new missions aim to try. "We got all excited, thinking maybe we'd discovered a new pulsar or some other object," James told New Scientist. However, when the researchers traced the origin of the radio pulse, they determined that Relay 2 was the only plausible source. Having ruled out the possibility that the pulse came from systems onboard the satellite, the team suggested two alternative events that could have created such a burst. First, the satellite may have been hit by a micrometeorite, the researchers said in the preprint. Impacts may generate clouds of plasma that can increase the conductivity of the space environment or create an electric field on the surface of a spacecraft. "Micrometeoroid impacts can also produce direct radio-frequency emission," the team wrote. But a more likely scenario is that the radio burst originated from an electrostatic discharge event on Relay 2, the researchers said. Electrostatic discharge (ESD) occurs when there is a sudden flow of electricity between two nearby surfaces or materials on a spacecraft that have different electric charges. RELATED STORIES —Satellite coated in ultra-dark 'Vantablack' paint will launch into space next year to help combat major issue —China uses 'gravitational slingshots' to save 2 satellites that were stuck in the wrong orbit for 123 days —'Yet another miracle save': NASA engineers complete nail-biting maneuver to resurrect Voyager 1's long-dead thrusters "As a very early spacecraft, Relay 2 may have been constructed from materials [...] capable of holding greater charge and hence producing stronger ESD events," the researchers wrote. "It has long been known that ESD causes radio frequency pulses," they added. Either scenario is possible, but it would be very difficult to establish which one applied in this case, Karen Aplin, a professor of space science and technology at the University of Bristol in the U.K. who was not involved in the study, told New Scientist. That's because the signals produced by both would look so similar, she said. But the research is a good launchpad for future investigations of electrostatic discharge from satellites, Aplin said. "In a world where there is a lot of space debris and there are more small, low-cost satellites with limited protection from electrostatic discharges, this radio detection may ultimately offer a new technique to evaluate electrostatic discharges in space," she said.
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Antarctic mystery deepens with radio waves detected below the ice
Mountains, sub-glacial lakes, hidden valleys, even remnants of lost civilizations: what lies under Antarctica's vast 2,000-metre thick ice sheet has long been a mystery akin to the depths of the ocean or the dark side of the moon. As big as the US and India combined, much of the frozen continent is off-limits to the handful of hardy visitors permitted each year, adding to the mystery. The sense of enigma has been heightened by the revelation that "strange radio pulses" detected in the ice defy explanation after almost a decade of trying to figure them out. First picked up in 2016 by instrument-laden balloons flown by NASA's Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) team, the inexplicable "anomalies" appear to be a "form of radio waves," according to researchers from Penn State University (PSU). But what makes the pulses anomalous is that they "appeared to be coming from below the horizon" - an orientation that "cannot be explained by the current understanding of particle physics," the researchers confirmed. "The radio waves that we detected nearly a decade ago were at really steep angles, like 30 degrees below the surface of the ice," said PSU's Stephanie Wissel, who was part of the NASA ANITA team. In other words, the pulses should have been absorbed by rock - thousands of kilometres of it going by the angle of the pulses - long before the balloons could detect them. "It's an interesting problem because we still don't actually have an explanation for what those anomalies are," Wissel said. Funded by the US Department of Energy and the US National Science Foundation, the PSU researchers were part of a team made up of dozens of scientists that worked at the world's biggest cosmic ray detector - the Pierre Auger Observatory on the western Argentine plain - to try solve the riddle. The team's attempt to decode the mystery featured in the journal Physical Review Letters in late March and was publicised in a statement released by PSU in mid-June. In mid-March, a multinational team of scientists including representatives of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) published what they described as "the most detailed map yet" of sub-glacial Antarctica. Showing the shape of the continent were it ice-free, the map showed a tapestry of islands, mountains and valleys and revealed the ice's thickest point to be an approximately 4,700-metre section filling an unnamed canyon.
CBC
20-06-2025
- Science
- CBC
Through the air and across the Island: An up-close look at a CBC P.E.I. transmission tower
The CBC transmission tower in Churchill, P.E.I., is the largest one on the Island. We took a drone up to learn more about how radio waves and digital TV are transmitted through the air.
Yahoo
15-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists Discover Bizarre Signals Coming From Ice in Antarctica
Some strange radio signals are broadcasting out of Antarctic ice, and the researchers who found them don't know why. Using a cosmic particle detector, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania detected peculiar signals that, according to a press release, "defy the current understanding of particle physics." The particle detector that found those strange signals — which is, charmingly, suspended from a bunch of balloons — belongs to a range of instruments known as the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA). That balloon-based conglomerate generally detects particles reflected onto the ground from space, which made it all the stranger when the Penn researchers found that the signals they were reading seemed to be coming from below the horizon. According to Stephanie Wissel, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at Penn who also worked on the ANITA team that detected those strange Antarctic pulses, the researchers had been looking for tiny, electric charge-lacking neutrino particles when they stumbled upon the bizarre waves. "The radio waves that we detected were at really steep angles," Wissel said in the press release, "like 30 degrees below the surface of the ice." Though the particulars of the particle findings were detailed in a new paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the researchers were more candid in the press release about just how stumped they were. "We still don't actually have an explanation for what those anomalies are," Wissel said, "but what we do know is that they're most likely not representing neutrinos." The issue with neutrinos, which are bountiful in the universe but generally emitted by super high-energy sources like supernovae or particle accelerators, is that we don't have very many instruments sensitive enough to detect them — which was why the ANITA team was on the hunt for them in the first place. "You have a billion neutrinos passing through your thumbnail at any moment, but neutrinos don't really interact," the Penn professor explained. "So, this is the double-edged sword problem. If we detect them, it means they have traveled all this way without interacting with anything else. We could be detecting a neutrino coming from the edge of the observable universe." After comparing the ANITA readings to other neutrino detectors, the team felt confident that what they were seeing was something different, which was equal parts fascinating and head-scratching. "My guess is that some interesting radio propagation effect occurs near ice and also near the horizon that I don't fully understand, but we certainly explored several of those, and we haven't been able to find any of those yet either," Wissel theorized. "So, right now, it's one of these long-standing mysteries." With ANITA approaching its 20th birthday, NASA, Penn State, and other institutions have been working on designing a more sensitive balloon-borne instrument to detect particles like neutrinos. Known as Payload for Ultrahigh Energy Observations (PUEO), the new detector is both larger and better at detective work for smaller particles. "I'm excited that when we fly PUEO, we'll have better sensitivity," Wissel said. "In principle, we should pick up more anomalies, and maybe we'll actually understand what they are. We also might detect neutrinos, which would in some ways be a lot more exciting." More on Antarctica: Antarctic Glacier Accused of "Ice Piracy"
