Curious cosmic coincidence could help explain fast radio burst mystery

The black hole collapse theory of the FRB got some boost from the BOAT event.

But astronomers have yet to detect evidence of an associated supernova, perhaps because thick dust clouds in that part of the sky (just a few degrees above the plane of our own galaxy) are dimming any incoming light. “We cannot say conclusively that there is a supernova, which is surprising given the burst’s brightness,” said Andrew Levan, an astrophysicist at Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands, who led near- and mid-infrared observations using NASA’s Webb Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope in hopes of spotting the expected supernova. "If it’s there, it’s very faint. We plan to keep looking, but it’s possible the entire star collapsed straight into the black hole instead of exploding.”

["Brightest-ever gamma-ray burst (the “BOAT”) continues to puzzle astronomers", Ars]
 
"A gravitational wave event known as GW190425 was detected by the famed Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in April 2019 only two and a half hours before a Canadian radio telescope spotted a powerful FRB in the same patch of sky. "

In the same patch of the sky? So radio waves and gravitational waves undergo the same gravitational deflection? Unrealistic, to say the least.

The jet observations, which these events are discovered with in the FRB models. are not much deflected.

But assuming they were, the first order behavior of massless photons and gravitons (gravitational wave quanta) are the same. They will follow geodesics. As long as the gravitational waves have small wavelengths and small amplitudes and propagate in a static gravitational field they will behave the same as propagating light.
 

Latest posts