The Sound of an FRB

This gallery shows the radio light signal from a new kind of transient astronomical object called "Fast Radio Burst" (or FRB). To help understand the radio light signal, it has been translated to a sound.

These "sonifications" of the data, along with the dynamic spectra shown visually, are shown nine bursts from the repeating fast radio burst, FRB 121102, as seen by the Very Large Array.

This research was conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, and is funded by the National Science Foundation.

The original publication is Chatterjee et al (2017), "The direct localization of a fast radio burst and its host" at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature20797. Data is available at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/TLDKXG. Sound files are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/QSWJE6.