Lorimer, D. R., Bailes, M., McLaughlin, M. A., Narkevic, D. J. & Crawford, F. A bright millisecond radio burst of extragalactic origin. Science318, 777–780 (2007).
2.
Petroff, E., Hessels, J. W. T. & Lorimer, D. R. Fast radio bursts. Astron. Astrophys. Rev. 27, 4 (2019).
3.
Platts, E. et al. A living theory catalogue for fast radio bursts. Phys. Rep. 821, 1–27 (2019).
4.
Spitler, L. G. et al. A repeating fast radio burst. Nature531, 202–205 (2016).
5.
CHIME/FRB Collaboration. A second source of repeating fast radio bursts. Nature566, 235–238 (2019).
6.
The CHIME/FRB Collaboration. CHIME/FRB discovery of eight new repeating fast radio burst sources. Astrophys. J. 885, L24 (2019).
Lazarus, P. et al. Prospects for high-precision pulsar timing with the new Effelsberg PSRIX backend. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 458, 868–880 (2016).
14.
Marcote, B. et al. The repeating fast radio burst FRB 121102 as seen on milliarcsecond angular scales. Astrophys. J. 834, L8 (2017).
15.
Alam, S. et al. The eleventh and twelfth data releases of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: final data from SDSS-III. Astrophys. J. Suppl. 219, 12 (2015).
16.
Wright, E. L. A cosmology calculator for the world wide web. Publ. Astron. Soc. Pacif. 118, 1711–1715 (2006).
17.
Tendulkar, S. P. et al. The host galaxy and redshift of the repeating fast radio burst FRB 121102. Astrophys. J. 834, L7 (2017).
18.
Gusev, A. S. Hierarchy and size distribution function of star formation regions in the spiral galaxy NGC 628. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 442, 3711–3721 (2014).
19.
Metzger, B. D., Berger, E. & Margalit, B. Millisecond magnetar birth connects FRB 121102 to superluminous supernovae and long-duration gamma-ray bursts. Astrophys. J. 841, 14 (2017).
20.
Guillochon, J., Parrent, J., Kelley, L. Z. & Margutti, R. An open catalog for supernova data. Astrophys. J. 835, 64 (2017).
21.
Michilli, D. et al. An extreme magneto-ionic environment associated with the fast radio burst source FRB 121102. Nature553, 182–185 (2018).
22.
Margalit, B. & Metzger, B. D. A concordance picture of FRB 121102 as a flaring magnetar embedded in a magnetized ion-electron wind nebula. Astrophys. J. 868, L4 (2018).
23.
Metzger, B. D., Margalit, B. & Sironi, L. Fast radio bursts as synchrotron maser emission from decelerating relativistic blast waves. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 485, 4091–4106 (2019).
24.
Ravi, V. The prevalence of repeating fast radio bursts. Nat. Astron. 3, 928–931 (2019).
25.
Margalit, B., Berger, E. & Metzger, B. D. Fast radio bursts from magnetars born in binary neutron star mergers and accretion induced collapse. Astrophys. J. 886, 110 (2019).
26.
Mahony, E. K. et al. A search for the host galaxy of FRB 171020. Astrophys. J. 867, L10 (2018).
27.
Bhandari, S. et al. The survey for pulsars and extragalactic radio bursts. II. New FRB discoveries and their follow-up. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 475, 1427–1446 (2018).
28.
Gourdji, K. et al. A sample of low-energy bursts from FRB 121102. Astrophys. J. 877, L19 (2019).
29.
Lyutikov, M. Fast radio bursts’ emission mechanism: implication from localization. Astrophys. J. 838, L13 (2017).
30.
Scholz, P. et al. The repeating fast radio burst FRB 121102: multi-wavelength observations and additional bursts. Astrophys. J. 833, 177 (2016).
31.
Scholz, P. et al. Simultaneous X-ray, gamma-ray, and radio observations of the repeating fast radio burst FRB 121102. Astrophys. J. 846, 80 (2017).
32.
Hardy, L. K. et al. A search for optical bursts from the repeating fast radio burst FRB 121102. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 472, 2800–2807 (2017).
33.
MAGIC Collaboration. Constraining very-high-energy and optical emission from FRB 121102 with the MAGIC telescopes. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 481, 2479–2486 (2018).
34.
Cordes, J. M. & McLaughlin, M. A. Searches for fast radio transients. Astrophys. J. 596, 1142–1154 (2003).
35.
CHIME/FRB Collaboration. The CHIME fast radio burst project: system overview. Astrophys. J. 863, 48 (2018).
36.
Keimpema, A. et al. The SFXC software correlator for very long baseline interferometry: algorithms and implementation. Exp. Astron. 39, 259–279 (2015).
37.
Greisen, E. W. AIPS, the VLA, and the VLBA. In Information Handling in Astronomy. Historical Vistas (ed. Heck, A.) Vol. 285, 109 (Astrophysics and Space Science Library, 2003).
38.
Shepherd, M. C., Pearson, T. J. & Taylor, G. B. DIFMAP: an interactive program for synthesis imaging. Bull. Am. Astron. Soc. 26, 987–989 (1994).
Chatterjee, S. et al. Pulsar parallaxes at 5 GHz with the Very Long Baseline Array. Astrophys. J. 604, 339–345 (2004).
40.
Pradel, N., Charlot, P. & Lestrade, J. F. Astrometric accuracy of phase-referenced observations with the VLBA and EVN. Astron. Astrophys. 452, 1099–1106 (2006).
41.
Kirsten, F., Vlemmings, W., Campbell, R. M., Kramer, M. & Chatterjee, S. Revisiting the birth locations of pulsars B1929+10, B2020+28, and B2021+51. Astron. Astrophys. 577, A111 (2015).
Michilli, D. et al. Single-pulse classifier for the LOFAR tied-array all-sky survey. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 480, 3457–3467 (2018).
44.
Michilli, D. & Hessels, J. W. T. SpS: Single-pulse Searcher. Astrophys. Source Code Library 1806. 013 (2018).
45.
Hotan, A. W., van Straten, W. & Manchester, R. N. PSRCHIVE and PSRFITS: an open approach to radio pulsar data storage and analysis. Publ. Astron. Soc. Aust. 21, 302–309 (2004).
46.
Hessels, J. W. T. et al. FRB 121102 bursts show complex time-frequency structure. Astrophys. J. 876, L23 (2019).
47.
Law, C. J. et al. A multi-telescope campaign on FRB 121102: implications for the FRB population. Astrophys. J. 850, 76 (2017).
48.
Cordes, J. M., Weisberg, J. M. & Boriakoff, V. Small-scale electron density turbulence in the interstellar medium. Astrophys. J. 288, 221–247 (1985).
49.
Rickett, B. J. Radio propagation through the turbulent interstellar plasma. Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 28, 561–605 (1990).
50.
Cordes, J. M. & Lazio, T. J. W. NE2001.I. A new model for the galactic distribution of free electrons and its fluctuations. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0207156 (2002).
51.
Fomalont, E. B. & Perley, R. A. Calibration and editing. In Synthesis Imaging in Radio Astronomy II (eds Taylor, G. B., Carilli, C. L. & Perley, R. A.) Vol. 180, 79 (Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series, 1999).
52.
Thompson, A. R. Fundamentals of Radio Interferometry. In Synthesis Imaging in Radio Astronomy II (eds Taylor, G. B., Carilli, C. L. & Perley, R. A.) Vol. 180, 11 (Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series, 1999).
53.
Natarajan, I. et al. Resolving the blazar CGRaBS J0809+5341 in the presence of telescope systematics. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 464, 4306–4317 (2017).
54.
Law, C. J. et al. realfast: real-time, commensal fast transient surveys with the Very Large Array. Astrophys. J. Suppl. 236, 8 (2018).
55.
Condon, J. J. et al. The NRAO VLA sky survey. Astron. J. 115, 1693–1716 (1998).
56.
Bertin, E. & Arnouts, S. SExtractor: software for source extraction. Astron. Astrophys. Suppl. Ser. 117, 393–404 (1996).
57.
Gaia Collaboration. Gaia Data Release 1. Summary of the astrometric, photometric, and survey properties. Astron. Astrophys. 595, A2 (2016).
Jarrett, T. H. et al. Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): exploring the WISE web in G12. Astrophys. J. 836, 182 (2017).
60.
Kennicutt, J., Robert, C., Tamblyn, P. & Congdon, C. E. Past and future star formation in disk galaxies. Astrophys. J. 435, 22 (1994).
61.
Dopita, M. A., Kewley, L. J., Sutherland, R. S. & Nicholls, D. C. Chemical abundances in high-redshift galaxies: a powerful new emission line diagnostic. Astrophys. Space Sci. 361, 61 (2016).
62.
Faber, S. M. et al. Galaxy luminosity functions to z ~ 1 from DEEP2 and COMBO-17: implications for red galaxy formation. Astrophys. J. 665, 265–294 (2007).
63.
Blanton, M. R. et al. The galaxy luminosity function and luminosity density at redshift z = 0.1. Astrophys. J. 592, 819–838 (2003).
64.
Zhang, Y.-C. & Yang, X.-H. Size distribution of galaxies in SDSS DR7: weak dependence on halo environment. Res. Astron. Astrophys. 19, 006 (2019).
65.
Yao, J. M., Manchester, R. N. & Wang, N. A new electron-density model for estimation of pulsar and FRB Distances. Astrophys. J. 835, 29 (2017).
66.
Yamasaki, S. & Totani, T. The galactic halo contribution to the dispersion measure of extragalactic fast radio bursts. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.00849 (2019).
67.
Inoue, S. Probing the cosmic reionization history and local environment of gamma-ray bursts through radio dispersion. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 348, 999–1008 (2004).
68.
Li, Y., Zhang, B., Nagamine, K. & Shi, J. The FRB 121102 host is atypical among nearby fast radio bursts. Astrophys. J. 884, L26 (2019).
69.
Lyubarsky, Y. A model for fast extragalactic radio bursts. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 442, L9–L13 (2014).
70.
Beloborodov, A. M. A flaring magnetar in FRB 121102? Astrophys. J. 843, L26 (2017).
71.
Zhang, B. A “cosmic comb” model of fast radio bursts. Astrophys. J. 836, L32 (2017).
72.
Zhang, B. FRB 121102: a repeatedly combed neutron star by a nearby low-luminosity accreting supermassive black hole. Astrophys. J. 854, L21 (2018).
73.
Kewley, L. J., Dopita, M. A., Sutherland, R. S., Heisler, C. A. & Trevena, J. Theoretical modeling of starburst galaxies. Astrophys. J. 556, 121–140 (2001).
74.
Kewley, L. J. & Dopita, M. A. Using strong lines to estimate abundances in extragalactic H II regions and starburst galaxies. Astrophys. J. Suppl. 142, 35–52 (2002).
75.
Kauffmann, G. et al. The host galaxies of active galactic nuclei. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 346, 1055–1077 (2003).
76.
Loewenstein, M., Mushotzky, R. F., Angelini, L., Arnaud, K. A. & Quataert, E. Chandra limits on X-ray emission associated with the supermassive black holes in three giant elliptical galaxies. Astrophys. J. 555, L21–L24 (2001).
77.
Astropy Collaboration. Astropy: a community Python package for astronomy. Astron. Astrophys. 558, A33 (2013).
More than 40 trillion gallons of rain drenched the Southeast United States in the last week from Hurricane Helene and a run-of-the-mill rainstorm that sloshed in ahead of it — an unheard of amount of water that has stunned experts.
That’s enough to fill the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium 51,000 times, or Lake Tahoe just once. If it was concentrated just on the state of North Carolina that much water would be 3.5 feet deep (more than 1 meter). It’s enough to fill more than 60 million Olympic-size swimming pools.
“That’s an astronomical amount of precipitation,” said Ed Clark, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. “I have not seen something in my 25 years of working at the weather service that is this geographically large of an extent and the sheer volume of water that fell from the sky.”
The flood damage from the rain is apocalyptic, meteorologists said. More than 100 people are dead, according to officials.
Private meteorologist Ryan Maue, a former NOAA chief scientist, calculated the amount of rain, using precipitation measurements made in 2.5-mile-by-2.5 mile grids as measured by satellites and ground observations. He came up with 40 trillion gallons through Sunday for the eastern United States, with 20 trillion gallons of that hitting just Georgia, Tennessee, the Carolinas and Florida from Hurricane Helene.
Clark did the calculations independently and said the 40 trillion gallon figure (151 trillion liters) is about right and, if anything, conservative. Maue said maybe 1 to 2 trillion more gallons of rain had fallen, much if it in Virginia, since his calculations.
Clark, who spends much of his work on issues of shrinking western water supplies, said to put the amount of rain in perspective, it’s more than twice the combined amount of water stored by two key Colorado River basin reservoirs: Lake Powell and Lake Mead.
Several meteorologists said this was a combination of two, maybe three storm systems. Before Helene struck, rain had fallen heavily for days because a low pressure system had “cut off” from the jet stream — which moves weather systems along west to east — and stalled over the Southeast. That funneled plenty of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico. And a storm that fell just short of named status parked along North Carolina’s Atlantic coast, dumping as much as 20 inches of rain, said North Carolina state climatologist Kathie Dello.
Then add Helene, one of the largest storms in the last couple decades and one that held plenty of rain because it was young and moved fast before it hit the Appalachians, said University of Albany hurricane expert Kristen Corbosiero.
“It was not just a perfect storm, but it was a combination of multiple storms that that led to the enormous amount of rain,” Maue said. “That collected at high elevation, we’re talking 3,000 to 6000 feet. And when you drop trillions of gallons on a mountain, that has to go down.”
The fact that these storms hit the mountains made everything worse, and not just because of runoff. The interaction between the mountains and the storm systems wrings more moisture out of the air, Clark, Maue and Corbosiero said.
North Carolina weather officials said their top measurement total was 31.33 inches in the tiny town of Busick. Mount Mitchell also got more than 2 feet of rainfall.
Before 2017’s Hurricane Harvey, “I said to our colleagues, you know, I never thought in my career that we would measure rainfall in feet,” Clark said. “And after Harvey, Florence, the more isolated events in eastern Kentucky, portions of South Dakota. We’re seeing events year in and year out where we are measuring rainfall in feet.”
Storms are getting wetter as the climate change s, said Corbosiero and Dello. A basic law of physics says the air holds nearly 4% more moisture for every degree Fahrenheit warmer (7% for every degree Celsius) and the world has warmed more than 2 degrees (1.2 degrees Celsius) since pre-industrial times.
Corbosiero said meteorologists are vigorously debating how much of Helene is due to worsening climate change and how much is random.
For Dello, the “fingerprints of climate change” were clear.
“We’ve seen tropical storm impacts in western North Carolina. But these storms are wetter and these storms are warmer. And there would have been a time when a tropical storm would have been heading toward North Carolina and would have caused some rain and some damage, but not apocalyptic destruction. ”
Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
It’s a dinosaur that roamed Alberta’s badlands more than 70 million years ago, sporting a big, bumpy, bony head the size of a baby elephant.
On Wednesday, paleontologists near Grande Prairie pulled its 272-kilogram skull from the ground.
They call it “Big Sam.”
The adult Pachyrhinosaurus is the second plant-eating dinosaur to be unearthed from a dense bonebed belonging to a herd that died together on the edge of a valley that now sits 450 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.
It didn’t die alone.
“We have hundreds of juvenile bones in the bonebed, so we know that there are many babies and some adults among all of the big adults,” Emily Bamforth, a paleontologist with the nearby Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum, said in an interview on the way to the dig site.
She described the horned Pachyrhinosaurus as “the smaller, older cousin of the triceratops.”
“This species of dinosaur is endemic to the Grand Prairie area, so it’s found here and nowhere else in the world. They are … kind of about the size of an Indian elephant and a rhino,” she added.
The head alone, she said, is about the size of a baby elephant.
The discovery was a long time coming.
The bonebed was first discovered by a high school teacher out for a walk about 50 years ago. It took the teacher a decade to get anyone from southern Alberta to come to take a look.
“At the time, sort of in the ’70s and ’80s, paleontology in northern Alberta was virtually unknown,” said Bamforth.
When paleontogists eventually got to the site, Bamforth said, they learned “it’s actually one of the densest dinosaur bonebeds in North America.”
“It contains about 100 to 300 bones per square metre,” she said.
Paleontologists have been at the site sporadically ever since, combing through bones belonging to turtles, dinosaurs and lizards. Sixteen years ago, they discovered a large skull of an approximately 30-year-old Pachyrhinosaurus, which is now at the museum.
About a year ago, they found the second adult: Big Sam.
Bamforth said both dinosaurs are believed to have been the elders in the herd.
“Their distinguishing feature is that, instead of having a horn on their nose like a triceratops, they had this big, bony bump called a boss. And they have big, bony bumps over their eyes as well,” she said.
“It makes them look a little strange. It’s the one dinosaur that if you find it, it’s the only possible thing it can be.”
The genders of the two adults are unknown.
Bamforth said the extraction was difficult because Big Sam was intertwined in a cluster of about 300 other bones.
The skull was found upside down, “as if the animal was lying on its back,” but was well preserved, she said.
She said the excavation process involved putting plaster on the skull and wooden planks around if for stability. From there, it was lifted out — very carefully — with a crane, and was to be shipped on a trolley to the museum for study.
“I have extracted skulls in the past. This is probably the biggest one I’ve ever done though,” said Bamforth.
“It’s pretty exciting.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 25, 2024.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
