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More mysterious cosmic radio bursts detected
NEWS & TECHNOLOGY
More mysterious cosmic radio bursts detected
Macaques use stone tools to crack nuts THE macaques of Thailand have started a new tradition. For at least a century, they have used stone tools to smash open shellfish on the seashore. Now they have begun using stones to open oil palm nuts further inland. They may be the first non-human primates to have begun adapting their Stone Age technology to exploit a new ecological niche. 10 | NewScientist | 9 September 2017
influence our explanation of these elusive events, but researchers hope it will help narrow down the possibilities. “Previously we thought there wasn’t much emission at high or low frequencies, but now it looks like there is,” says Avi Loeb at Harvard University.
MAURITIUS IMAGES GMBH / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
ONE of the most mysterious things in space just got even weirder. Fifteen new fast radio bursts have been spotted – all from the only source of these that we have ever seen repeat. Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are some of the universe’s strangest phenomena: powerful radio signals that flash from distant space for milliseconds and then disappear. They have been attributed to everything from black holes to aliens, but there’s no clear explanation yet. Because they are so brief, and because radio telescopes can only watch a small area of the sky at a time, only about 60 of these bursts have ever been detected. Over half are from the only source ever seen to repeat: FRB 121102, which is in a dwarf galaxy about 3 billion light years from Earth. Now, researchers with the Breakthrough Listen initiative, a $100 million search for signs of intelligent life in the universe, have detected 15 more pulses from this famous repeating source. These signals were at higher frequencies than any fast radio burst we have seen before, and about twice as high as previous measurements from this source. It’s still unclear how that could
Tool use is common, but very few animals make routine use of stone tools. Among non-human primates, just three are known to do so: the western chimpanzees of West Africa, the bearded capuchins of Brazil and the long-tailed macaques of Thailand. However, biologists thought they all restricted their stone tool use to a specific environmental setting. “The chimpanzees live in tropical rainforest, and the capuchins in a dry savannah area,” says Lydia Luncz at the University of Oxford. And the macaques spend a lot of time on the beaches of Thailand’s islands.
This wider frequency range could make repeating FRBs easier to detect. Each radio telescope only looks at a narrow frequency range, so radio bursts across a wider range mean that more telescopes can find them. Finding more is crucial as we currently have only one to base our explanations on. Right now, we can only see FRBs that are a certain distance from Earth, due to the expansion of the universe and the redshift it
produces. As distant objects are accelerating away from us at a higher rate than closer bodies, we see the light they produce as shifted into the lower-frequency red part of the spectrum. So, a radio telescope designed to listen to only lower frequencies is limited to observing pulses from relatively distant objects. Loeb says that if these bursts occur at a wider frequency range, we will be able to detect FRBs that could be far closer or further than those we have spotted before. If all FRBs were repeaters, the observable universe would light up with one pulse every second (arxiv.org/abs/1706.06582). The next radio telescopes could be able to detect more than one FRB per minute, especially if repeating FRBs can emit radiation at several different wavelengths, Loeb says. But the new observations make it seem even less likely that all FRBs repeat – no others have ever been seen to repeat, or to flash at such high frequencies. Instead, it adds another layer of weirdness that could make the mechanism producing these cosmic bursts even harder to pin down. “It’s very funky how the individual bursts can pop up anywhere in this wide range of frequencies,” says Peter Williams, also at Harvard. “I have yet to see anyone offer up a good explanation for how that might –Too fast, too furious– happen.” Leah Crane n
But the macaques also roam inland. In 2016, Luncz and her team visited a defunct oil palm plantation on Yao Noi Island. They found stones that seemed to have been used as hammers and anvils, and broken oil palm nuts. The researchers set up camera traps. Over three weeks, the cameras recorded long-tailed macaques in action. The monkeys placed nuts on the stone anvils, then hit them with
“Humans only introduced oil palms 13 years ago, so this is the first nut-cracking macaque generation”
hammers until they broke, exposing the nutritious kernel (International Journal of Primatology, doi.org/ccpn). What is remarkable, says Luncz, is that humans only introduced oil palms to the area about 13 years ago. “So this is the first nut-cracking macaque generation on the island,” she says. Macaques are always resourceful, says Elisabetta Visalberghi at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies in Rome, Italy. But she says they have been seen cracking sea almonds along the shore, so it is a small mental leap to begin cracking oil palm nuts inland. Colin Barras n
More mysterious cosmic radio bursts detected
Macaques use stone tools to crack nuts THE macaques of Thailand have started a new tradition. For at least a century, they have used stone tools to smash open shellfish on the seashore. Now they have begun using stones to open oil palm nuts further inland. They may be the first non-human primates to have begun adapting their Stone Age technology to exploit a new ecological niche. 10 | NewScientist | 9 September 2017
influence our explanation of these elusive events, but researchers hope it will help narrow down the possibilities. “Previously we thought there wasn’t much emission at high or low frequencies, but now it looks like there is,” says Avi Loeb at Harvard University.
MAURITIUS IMAGES GMBH / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
ONE of the most mysterious things in space just got even weirder. Fifteen new fast radio bursts have been spotted – all from the only source of these that we have ever seen repeat. Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are some of the universe’s strangest phenomena: powerful radio signals that flash from distant space for milliseconds and then disappear. They have been attributed to everything from black holes to aliens, but there’s no clear explanation yet. Because they are so brief, and because radio telescopes can only watch a small area of the sky at a time, only about 60 of these bursts have ever been detected. Over half are from the only source ever seen to repeat: FRB 121102, which is in a dwarf galaxy about 3 billion light years from Earth. Now, researchers with the Breakthrough Listen initiative, a $100 million search for signs of intelligent life in the universe, have detected 15 more pulses from this famous repeating source. These signals were at higher frequencies than any fast radio burst we have seen before, and about twice as high as previous measurements from this source. It’s still unclear how that could
Tool use is common, but very few animals make routine use of stone tools. Among non-human primates, just three are known to do so: the western chimpanzees of West Africa, the bearded capuchins of Brazil and the long-tailed macaques of Thailand. However, biologists thought they all restricted their stone tool use to a specific environmental setting. “The chimpanzees live in tropical rainforest, and the capuchins in a dry savannah area,” says Lydia Luncz at the University of Oxford. And the macaques spend a lot of time on the beaches of Thailand’s islands.
This wider frequency range could make repeating FRBs easier to detect. Each radio telescope only looks at a narrow frequency range, so radio bursts across a wider range mean that more telescopes can find them. Finding more is crucial as we currently have only one to base our explanations on. Right now, we can only see FRBs that are a certain distance from Earth, due to the expansion of the universe and the redshift it
produces. As distant objects are accelerating away from us at a higher rate than closer bodies, we see the light they produce as shifted into the lower-frequency red part of the spectrum. So, a radio telescope designed to listen to only lower frequencies is limited to observing pulses from relatively distant objects. Loeb says that if these bursts occur at a wider frequency range, we will be able to detect FRBs that could be far closer or further than those we have spotted before. If all FRBs were repeaters, the observable universe would light up with one pulse every second (arxiv.org/abs/1706.06582). The next radio telescopes could be able to detect more than one FRB per minute, especially if repeating FRBs can emit radiation at several different wavelengths, Loeb says. But the new observations make it seem even less likely that all FRBs repeat – no others have ever been seen to repeat, or to flash at such high frequencies. Instead, it adds another layer of weirdness that could make the mechanism producing these cosmic bursts even harder to pin down. “It’s very funky how the individual bursts can pop up anywhere in this wide range of frequencies,” says Peter Williams, also at Harvard. “I have yet to see anyone offer up a good explanation for how that might –Too fast, too furious– happen.” Leah Crane n
But the macaques also roam inland. In 2016, Luncz and her team visited a defunct oil palm plantation on Yao Noi Island. They found stones that seemed to have been used as hammers and anvils, and broken oil palm nuts. The researchers set up camera traps. Over three weeks, the cameras recorded long-tailed macaques in action. The monkeys placed nuts on the stone anvils, then hit them with
“Humans only introduced oil palms 13 years ago, so this is the first nut-cracking macaque generation”
hammers until they broke, exposing the nutritious kernel (International Journal of Primatology, doi.org/ccpn). What is remarkable, says Luncz, is that humans only introduced oil palms to the area about 13 years ago. “So this is the first nut-cracking macaque generation on the island,” she says. Macaques are always resourceful, says Elisabetta Visalberghi at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies in Rome, Italy. But she says they have been seen cracking sea almonds along the shore, so it is a small mental leap to begin cracking oil palm nuts inland. Colin Barras n