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Fast radio bursts are some of the more mysterious events known in astronomy, but they are slowly becoming better understood. Case in point: Recent observations of a fast radio explosion in the Milky Way reveal the power plant behind the explosions: a flaming magnetar.
In 2007, astronomers first detected strange bursts of intense radio energy, known as (as you may have guessed) fast radio bursts, or FRBs for short. Subsequent observations – we’ve only spotted a couple of dozen so far – revealed that these FRBs were 1) insanely powerful and 2) hailing from practically everywhere.
In fact, the fact that they came from virtually everywhere is the reason astronomers thought they were insanely powerful. To be detectable at extra-galactic distances, whatever is causing FRB must be one of the most powerful explosions in the universe.
Also, to be so powerful at the radio end of the spectrum, magnetic fields have to be involved. With sufficiently strong magnetic fields, charged particles can wrap themselves in corkscrew paths, generating radio emissions.
It has been suspected that magnetars – super-magnetized, rapidly rotating neutron stars – may be the source of fast radio bursts, but all known FRBs have been too far away to tell.
But recently, scientists have had a lucky fortune. Using the CHIME radio telescope, a group of astronomers were monitoring a magnetar in the Milky Way galaxy, just 30,000 light-years away. They were keeping an eye on it because it was starting to flare up in X-ray emissions, and astronomers were wondering if something else could happen.
They were right. Shortly after the observations began, the magnetar known only as SGR 1935 + 2154 began to explode on the radio; a real fast radio burst, right there in front of our telescopes.
Despite the new identification, scientists are still not exactly sure how a magnetar launches a fast radio burst. Hopefully we will have luckier observations to tell us more.
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