In April, a team of astronomers discovered a short, powerful explosion of radio waves coming from outer space and then successfully discovered where it was coming from: a powerful object inside our own galaxy. This is the first time scientists have been able to point to such mysterious radio waves from inside the galaxy, making them the closest of their kind we have ever seen.
According to three papers published in the journal, radio waves – known as rapid radio bursts or FRBs – seem to have sprouted from the incredibly powerful “zombie” star hidden in our galaxy. Nature. Known as the neutron star, the object object is a super gala le left that forms when a giant star, larger than our own sun, collapses on its own. But this neutron star is what is known as a magnet. It conducts an extremely powerful magnetic field, which stores mind-boggling amounts of radiation, capable of distorting the shapes of atoms.
Finding the source of this FRB is a huge moment for astronomers eager to discover how these mysterious radio flashes come about. The FRB will appear once every second in the night sky, filling for only a few milliseconds at a time. But we’ve only seen a small part of this phenomenon in the game, and we all explode Is The outside of our galaxy is found to be billions of light-years away. That’s why it’s hard to find out where they’re coming from. “These are very mysterious signs, and Kyoshi Masu, an assistant professor of physics at MIT, says they don’t really have a good idea of what they’ve produced or what physics is behind it. Edge.
Now with this discovery, astronomers have a very close source to work with. Chemically speaking, in our own backyard – the magnet is located just 30,000 light-years away. And it points to the solid connection between the magnet and these dynamic space radio waves. “This is the missing link,” Masui says. “Now we’ve seen magnetic arrows hitting fast radio, so it proves that at least a fraction of the fast radio explosions we see in the universe come through magnets.”
Scientists have been trying to trace the origin of FRBs since 2007, but FRBs are very fleeting, so they often need a combination of finding the right place at the right time with the right devices. Astronomers were lucky when they found a few FRBs, flashing again and again in the same part of the sky. These frequent explosions helped scientists find galaxies where these radio waves originated. Yet, it is not clear what substances within these galaxies form FRBs.
That is why this discovery is so crucial. Two different observatories in North America – CHIME in Canada and STARE2 in the United States – saw this FRB coming from the same part of the sky strengthen the signal’s reliability. The FRB was also incredibly bright. In fact, a regular cellphone 4G LTE receiver would be able to pick up signals coming from around the Milky Way galaxy, said Christopher Bochenk, a graduate student in astronomy at Caltech, who led the STARE2 exploration team.
“When I first saw the data, I froze and was basically paralyzed by the excitement,” Bochenk said during a press call.
The time and place of the flash lined up with another nearby cosmic event. A few days before the FRB investigation, astronomers noticed that a well-known magnet had become very hyperactive in the sky, sending X-rays and gamma rays. After analyzing the FRB data, astronomers from both CHIME and STARE2 confirmed that the radio waves are compatible with X-rays of magnetar, particularly large explosions. The discovery had already made waves in the astronomy community earlier this year, with the initial scientific reports of the connection being posted online and covered in the media. The researchers’ findings are now being reviewed by other scientists and are being formally presented in the journal. Nature This week.
Magnetars can make a very nice original story for many FRBs. Scientists suspect that these dead magnetic stars may be behind the radio flash for a while, as they are filled with jam and send a variety of light explosions for a fraction of a second. “This discovery, therefore, paints a picture that some and possibly – given how common these phenomena are in the universe – arise from fast radio bursting magnets from other galaxies,” Bochenek said.
But astronomers have not yet announced the mystery behind the solved FRB. For one thing, astronomers continued to observe the magnet, as it lost more X-rays and gamma rays, but the events that followed did not match any significant radio wave explosions. Also, the explosion was still relatively weak compared to the other FRBs we saw. It is actually 1000 times weaker than the weak FRB seen from outside our galaxies. So the mechanics on the play are still not fully understood.
The good news is that astronomers have some very good suspects to investigate. Not only will they be able to continue the study of this one magnet, but there are about 30 other well-known magnetars that will get a lot of extra attention now. And astronomers may focus on finding FRBs in other galaxies where magnetars are suspected to be present. It could give us a better understanding if this was an event off-shoot – or the final part of an FRB puzzle.
“We still don’t really know how lucky we really got,” says Bochenek. “It simply came to our notice then. Or some of these things that happen every year. But with more events, we can say exactly how lucky we were. “
