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The studies published in “Nature” detail the observation of one of those high-energy pulses, produced by a star with a powerful magnetic field.
The origin of the enigmatic fast radio bursts (FRBs), which astronomers have been trying to explain for more than a decade, is closer to being understood after the first such signals are detected in the Milky Way.
Three studies published Wednesday 4-N in the journal Nature detail the observation of one of those high-energy pulses produced by a magnetar, a type of neutron star with a powerful magnetic field, located in our galaxy.
The researchers believe this discovery will help clarify the origin of these events, which until now had only been detected in regions further away from the universe and whose unusual nature has been the subject of all sorts of hypotheses.
Unexplained signs
Rapid radio bursts are sudden flashes that in a split second can discharge more than a hundred million times the energy generated by the sun.
Since they were first detected in 2007, astronomers have identified numerous explosions from various parts of the universe, but their remoteness has so far made it difficult to decipher the mechanisms that cause them.
Among the various hypotheses that have been put on the table in recent years was the possibility that their origin was that of neutron stars, the dense remnants of some giant stars after their explosion as supernovae.
The observations now detailed in “Nature” point in that direction.
“This finding suggests that some of the explosions, and probably most of them, given how common these events are in the universe, originate in magnetars,” Christopher Bochenek, of the California Institute of Technology, said in a telephone news conference.
International collaboration
On April 28, a Canadian (Chime) and American (Stare) observation project detected an FRB in the same region of the sky.
In a short period of 1 millisecond, the burst, identified as FRB 200428, emitted more energy into radio waves than the Sun generates in half a minute.
Both teams coincide in indicating the galactic magnetar SGR 1935 + 2154 as the source of the signal, which was accompanied by an explosion of X-rays from the same source.
“When I first looked at the data I froze, practically paralyzed with emotion, it took me a few minutes to recover,” Bochenek recalls.
The Chinese radio telescope of five hundred meters of FAST aperture has contributed with the observations of the same magnetar to corroborate the possibility that this is the source of the explosion.
Future studies
Once there is evidence that magnetars can produce rapid radio bursts, scientists hope to study in depth what mechanisms trigger those sudden bursts of energy.
Most radio emissions in the universe are produced through a process known as synchrotron radiation, in which electrons moving in a disorderly fashion within gases interact with magnetic fields.
This phenomenon generates radio waves in the vicinity of supermassive black holes, supernova remnants and hot gas clouds within galaxies.
Physicists suspect that the explosions emitted by magnetars may be produced when a large stream of coordinated moving electrons interact with the magnetic field of those bodies.
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