RADIO BURSTS WITH EXTRAGALACTIC SPECTRAL CHARACTERISTICS SHOW TERRESTRIAL ORIGINS
- Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, Mail H39, P.O. Box 218, Hawthorn VIC 3122 (Australia)
- CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility, P.O. Box 76, Epping NSW 1710 (Australia)
- ICRAR/Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy, GPO Box U1987, Perth WA 6845 (Australia)
Three years ago, the report of a solitary radio burst was thought to be the first discovery of a rare, impulsive event of unknown extragalactic origin. The extragalactic interpretation was based on the swept-frequency nature of the event, which followed the dispersive delay expected from an extragalactic pulse. We report here on the detection of 16 pulses, the bulk of which exhibit a frequency sweep with a shape and magnitude resembling the Lorimer Burst. These new events were detected in a sidelobe of the Parkes Telescope and are of clearly terrestrial origin, with properties unlike any known sources of terrestrial broadband radio emission. The new detections cast doubt on the extragalactic interpretation of the original burst, and call for further sophistication in radio-pulse survey techniques to identify the origin of the anomalous terrestrial signals and definitively distinguish future extragalactic pulse detections from local signals. The ambiguous origin of these seemingly dispersed, swept-frequency signals suggests that radio-pulse searches using multiple detectors will be the only experiments able to provide definitive information about the origin of new swept-frequency radio burst detections.
- OSTI ID:
- 21567506
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 727, Issue 1; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/727/1/18; ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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