A new space analysis technology developed by Australian astronomers and engineers has detected more than 20 mysterious signals, with scientists hailing the technology as a game-changer for international astronomy.
CRACO, developed by astronomers and engineers at Australia's national science agency, CSIRO, and installed on CSIRO's ASKAP radio telescope, consists of a cluster of computers and accelerators, allowing it to rapidly scan space and detect fast radio bursts and other space phenomena.
In the first test of the technology, researchers detected two fast radio bursts and two neutron stars.
They then went on to find more than 20 fast radio bursts, according to research published today.
"We were focused on finding fast radio bursts, a mysterious phenomenon that has opened up a new field of research in astronomy," said research group leader Andy Wang from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy in Western Australia.
"CRACO is enabling us to find these bursts better than ever before. We have been searching for bursts 100 times per second and in the future we expect this to increase to 1,000 times per second," Wang said.
Keith Bannister, a CSIRO astronomer and engineer among the developers of the tool, said the scale of observation enabled by the new technology is huge.