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An international team of astronomers has announced that for the first time in our galaxy they have been able to identify ultra-fast radio waves (Fast Radio Burst-FRB), as well as their source. It’s probably a magnetar, a fast-spinning neutron star with a terribly strong magnetic field.
According to the Independent, the bright, high-energy flashes (“bursts”) from FRB are among the most powerful and mysterious phenomena in the universe so far, as scientists have not been able to find a completely satisfactory explanation for creation and origin. . its. In less than a second, energy is released more than 100 million times more than that of the Sun.
FRBs were first discovered in 2007 and more than 20 have been found in the universe since then, typically lasting only fractions of a second, making it very difficult to locate their origin, combined with the fact that that most come from far away. , beyond our galaxy. It is considered that its most probable origin is neutron stars (pulsars), very dense remnants of giant stars, which are what is left after a supernova explosion.
This time, three independent teams from Canada, China, the United States, and other countries, combining observations from multiple ground-based and space-based telescopes (most notably the Canadian CHIME radio telescope), identified the closest lightning source to date, namely waves radio stations from the FRB 200428 program, probably coming from the SGR 1935 + 2154 magnet. This is the first time scientists have observational data showing that magnets, a special case of pulsars, can actually cause FRBs.
The researchers, who published four articles in the journal Nature and gave a press conference on the significance of their discovery, said they now believe that magnets can produce some, if not all, FRBs however they can rule out other sources, at least for now.
“There is a great mystery as to what produces these great bursts of energy, which until now we have seen coming from half the universe. “This is the first time that we have been able to associate one of these exotic FRBs with a unique astrophysical object,” said Kiyoshi Masui, assistant professor of physics at MIT. “This particular FRB, which occurred in our own galaxy, is thousands of times brighter than any other magnetic flash we have seen,” he added.
According to APE-MPE, scientists have not yet answered the question of how magnets produce FRBs. The most powerful radio emissions in the universe are generated by so-called synchrotron radiation, in which a gas containing high-energy electrons interacts with magnetic fields in a way that emits energy at radio frequencies. With this mechanism, radio waves are often generated from huge black holes when surrounded by hot gases. But astrophysicists suspect that magnets produce radio waves through a completely different process.
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