Signals coming from distant parts of the universe are deeper than expected, reveals study

A recent study published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters revealed that the radio signals are now coming at lower frequencies than they had been previously realised. A team of researchers from McGill University researchers and Canada's CHIME Fast Radio Burst has established that FRBs include radio waves at frequencies lower than ever. This latest discovery redraws the boundaries for theoretical astrophysicists who are trying to put their finger on the source of FRBs. 

Ziggy Pleunis, a postdoctoral researcher in McGill's Department of Physics and lead author of the research said, “We detected fast radio bursts down to 110 MHz where before these bursts were only known to exist down to 300 MHz”. He further added, “This tells us that the region around the source of the bursts must be transparent to low-frequency emission, whereas some theories suggested that all low-frequency emission would be absorbed right away and could never be detected”.

The study focuses on an FRB source, which was first detected in the year 2018. The FRB 20180916B source attracted particular attention. This was because of its relative proximity to Earth and because of the fact that it emits FRBs at regular intervals. Further, the research team combined the capacities of CHIME with those of another radio telescope. Through this, detection of the remarkably low FRB frequencies was enabled. However, it was revealed that there is a delay of around three days between the higher frequencies being picked up by CHIME and the lower ones reaching LOFAR. Co-author Daniele Michilli, also a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Physics at McGill, said, “This systematic delay rules out explanations for the periodic activity that do not allow for the frequency dependence and thus brings us a few steps closer to understanding the origin of these mysterious bursts”.

Universe as a single neural network

Another study reveals that the whole universe could be a single neural network. As per the reports by Popular Mechanics, this could mean ‘pretty enormous things’ for the nature of the universe. Popular mechanics explains a neural network like a data structure, which is in a shape or organizing ideas inside computer hardware.

The report explains that making a shopping list or even writing down steps to accomplish a task is equivalent to making a data structure. Also, opening a ticket at an IT support system is like joining a data structure, which is called a ‘queue’. One can even programme these structures, write code for stacks, trees, and more.

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