Mysterious space signals tracked to dwarf galaxy 3 billion light years away

A dwarf galaxy located over 3 billion light years away from Earth has been sending out mysterious "fast radio bursts," astronomers have discovered.

Researchers published a report on January 5 claims to have finally pinpointed the galaxy where these bizarre radio pulses have been coming from for more than a decade.

Cees Bassa, an astronomer at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) and a co-author of the study, said scientists were surprised the pulses originated from a dwarf galaxy.

"We were not sure what to expect, but I think the whole team was surprised to see that our exotic source is hosted by a very puny and faint galaxy," Mr Bassa said.

The first fast radio burst (FRB) was discovered in 2007 and are deemed one of astronomy's most enigmatic phenomena.

The bursts of light last only milliseconds, yet they release more energy than our entire sun will radiate in 10,000 years.

So far, 18 FRBs have been detected and scientists estimate that one of these bursts occur in the sky once every 10 seconds and can come from anywhere.

In 2015, astronomers discovered the source location of FRB 150418, showing that it came from an elliptical galaxy six billion light years away.

Then in 2016, a team of Canadian and American astronomers noticed a new signal, called FRB 121102, was repeating and had travelled a long way to reach Earth.

They observed it for 83 hours over six months and were able to catch the FRB nine times.

Determining the source was not easy and astronomers used the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope to get a precise location in the sky.

Using that data, they used the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii to get a visible-light image of the region.

They found a faint galaxy right at the heart of the outbursts, three billion light-years away.

"Before we knew the distance to any FRBs, several proposed explanations for their origins said they could be coming from within or near our own Milky Way galaxy," co-author Shriharsh Tendulkar said in a statement from McGill University.

"We now have ruled out those explanations, at least for this FRB."

He said FRB 121102 may be linked to young neutron stars.

"One would generally expect most FRBs to come from large galaxies which have the largest numbers of stars and neutron stars," Mr Tendulkar said.

"This dwarf galaxy has fewer stars but is forming stars at a high rate, which may suggest that FRBs are linked to young neutron stars."

Understanding these bursts may open up a new field in astronomy and their unpredictability makes them difficult to spot.

FRBs may possibly be a future tool for studying the empty space between galaxies, but astronomers must first figure out what exactly they are.

"I am not exaggerating when I say there are more models for what FRBs could be than there are FRBs," astronomer Shami Chatterjee, the lead author of the paper, said.

The research was published in the Nature and Astrophysical Journal Letters.