Discovery of the first fast radio burst (Lorimer Burst)
Descubrimiento de la primera ráfaga rápida de radio (ráfaga de Lorimer)
- Date
- 2007 (datos de 2001) · confidence high
- Place
- West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia, United States
- Credited to
- Duncan Lorimer and David Narkevic
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
Reviewing 2001 archival data from the Parkes radio telescope (Australia), Lorimer and his student Narkevic identified a radio pulse under 5 milliseconds long with a dispersion incompatible with a Milky Way origin: the first known fast radio burst.
The pulse was recorded in 2001 with the Parkes radio telescope, but was not identified as a new phenomenon until the 2007 analysis.
What it led to
- New field of study of fast radio bursts
- Systematic search for hundreds of similar events
- Use of bursts as cosmological probes of the intergalactic medium