Unraveling the Mystery of Transient Radio Pulses.

New research on a Fast Radio Burst (FRB) from a cosmological object in a distant dwarf galaxy has revealed a rarely seen astronomical environment around its source, where magnetic fields twist, turn, and undulate over time. This is the first detection of a magnetic field reversal observed from an FRB, and the first time this behavior has been observed in another galaxy. The discovery also strengthens the idea that at least a fraction of FRBs originate in a binary system, which is a system of two stars that orbit each other. The National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Telescope was used to observe FRB 20190520B for seventeen months, and the peculiar characteristics of the FRB inspired a deeper dive into the data.