A CSIRO telescope in Western Australia has found its first ‘fast radio burst’ from space after less than four days of searching. The discovery came so quickly that the telescope, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) near Geraldton in Western Australia, looks set to become a world champion in this fiercely competitive area of…
Solved! First Distance To A ‘Fast Radio Burst’
For the first time a team of scientists has tracked down the location of a fast radio burst (FRB), confirming that these short but spectacular flashes of radio waves originate in the distant universe. The breakthrough, published today in the journal Nature, was made using CSIRO radio telescopes in eastern Australia and the National Astronomical…
Pulsars Make a GPS for the Cosmos
CSIRO scientists have written software that could guide spacecraft to Alpha Centauri, show that the planet Nibiru doesn’t exist … and prove that the Earth goes around the Sun. Dr George Hobbs (CSIRO) and his colleagues study pulsars — small spinning stars that deliver regular ‘blips’ or ‘pulses’ of radio waves and, sometimes, X-rays. Usually…