China's giant radio telescope observations unravel origin of cosmic enigmatic flashes

GUIYANG, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- Through studying the observation data of China's gigantic radio telescope located in the country's southwestern Guizhou Province, an international research team has uncovered compelling new evidence supporting a binary-system origin for at least some fast radio bursts, one of the most enigmatic phenomena in modern astrophysics.

These findings made by the research team, led by astronomers from the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, are based on observations made by using China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), and have been published online in the journal Science. ■