Burst 14 - Jason Hessels on the Repeating Fast Radio Burst

Released: 14 March 2016
Duration:22 minutes, 55 seconds

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We talk to radio astronomer Jason W.T. Hessels, corresponding author on a recent paper in Nature describing a repeating fast radio burst.  We asked Dr. Hessels about the discovery of the repeating burst, why his team believes they are from all one source outside our galaxy, what some of the proposed theories to explain the burst are, and efforts to follow up on the detection.

Guest Bio

Dr. Jason W.T. Hessels

Jason Hessels is an Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam and the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy.  His work focusses on studying the properties of radio pulsars and exploring other very short transient signals from our galaxy and beyond.  To do this, he uses the world's largest radio telescopes, including the 305-m dish in Arecibo and the Dutch Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR)

Links:

A Repeating Fast Radio Burst

The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico

Fast Radio Burst Discovered in the Arecibo Pulsar ALFA Survey
The Unseen Podcast Discussion of FRBs

What about these FRBs?

The LOFAR Radio Telescope

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: Jason Robinson and DJ Spooky

Burst 5 - What about these FRBs?

Release Date: 8 April 2015

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A recent paper, Discrete Steps in Dispersion Measures of Fast Radio Bursts, has generated a lot of excitement. Paul Carr reviews the basic facts about the 11 known FRBs and what this strange pattern might imply.

Update: Petroff, et. al., Finding the Source of Perytons at the Parkes Radio Telescope

Further Update: Five new FRBs were recently reported.  Only one of these five (130626) has a Dispersion Measure close to a multiple of 187.5, so it could just be a fluke, but FRB 150418 was also reported, and it's DM is 776.2, which is close to 4 x 187.5.

Music by Jason Robinson