A bright millisecond radio burst of extragalactic origin
Abstract
Pulsar surveys offer one of the few opportunities to monitor even a small fraction (~0.00001) of the radio sky for impulsive burst-like events with millisecond durations. In analysis of archival survey data, we have discovered a 30-Jy dispersed burst of duration <5 ms located three degrees from the Small Magellanic Cloud. The burst properties argue against a physical association with our Galaxy or the Small Magellanic Cloud. Current models for the free electron content in the Universe imply a distance to the burst of <1 Gpc No further bursts are seen in 90-hr of additional observations, implying that it was a singular event such as a supernova or coalescence of relativistic objects. Hundreds of similar events could occur every day and act as insightful cosmological probes.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0709.4301,
title = {A bright millisecond radio burst of extragalactic origin},
author = {D. R. Lorimer and M. Bailes and M. A. McLaughlin and D. J. Narkevic and F. Crawford},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0709.4301},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
18 pages, 4 figures. Accepted by Science. Published electronically via Science Express on September 27, 2007