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Mysterious fast radio bursts could be caused by asteroids slamming into dead stars
- Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) might be product of asteroids slamming into dead stars called neutron stars, resulting in energy releases that would take the Sun days to radiate and supply humankind with energy for 100 million years
- The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) discovered frequent Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) after coming online in 2017.
- Scientists have over 50 known hypotheses about the origin of FRBs, but upcoming research highlights collisions between asteroids and neutron stars as a possible explanation.
- Interstellar Objects (ISOs), an asteroid and comet class, may be numerous enough in galaxies and could account for the number of FRBs seen.
- The new research suggests the asteroids' and neutron stars' properties aligned with observations of FRBs including their energies, rates of occurrence, and durations.
- Collisions between asteroids and neutron stars result in a release of energy equivalent to that of a thousand hydrogen bombs due to the nucleus of dead stars’ extreme properties.
- It has been estimated that asteroids colliding with neutron stars occur every 10 million years in our galaxy along with an increase throughout the lifetime of the universe. The neutron star-interstellar object collision rate in the universe is thought to be comparable to the observed frequency of FRBs.
- Although collisions between asteroids and neutron stars might persevere as a potential explanation for single-occurrence FRBs, they cannot account for repeating FRBs.
- Further observations will assist in determining more about FRBs, such as how densely debris fields should exist and the kind of galaxies involved.
- The Astrophysical Journal has accepted the research team's results for publication, with additional efforts to be expended to construe the population of galaxies with interstellar objects.
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