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Astrophysicists first detected an explosion of cosmic radio waves within our solar system and identified its source, they reported new research shedding light on one of the mysteries of the Universe.
The origin of the powerful fast radio bursts (FRBs), intense bursts of radio emission that last only a few milliseconds, have puzzled scientists since they were first detected just over a decade ago. They are typically extragalactic, meaning they originate outside of our galaxy, but on April 28 this year, multiple telescopes detected a bright FRB from the same area within our Milky Way. Importantly, they were also able to locate the source: the galactic magnetar SGR 1935 + 2154. Magnetars, young neutron stars that are the most magnetic objects in the universe, have long been the prime suspects in the search for the source. of these radio bursts. But this discovery marks the first time that astronomers have been able to trace the signal directly to a magnetar.
Christopher Bochenek, a member of one of the teams that spotted the explosion, said that in about a millisecond the magnetar emitted as much energy as the Sun’s radio waves in 30 seconds.
He said the burst was “so bright” that theoretically if you had a record of the raw data from your cell phone’s 4G LTE receiver and knew what to look for, “you may have found this signal that has made it to the middle of the galaxy” in i phone data. “This energy was comparable to FRBs from outside the galaxy, he said, reinforcing the case for the magnetars to be the source of most extragalactic explosions.
These outbursts have been hotly debated ever since, with even small steps towards identifying their origin, according to AFP. One problem is that momentary flashes are hard to spot without knowing where to look.
Theories about their origins range from catastrophic events such as supernovae, to neutron stars, which are super dense stellar fragments formed after a star’s gravitational collapse. There is an even more exotic explanation – taken for granted by astronomers – for extraterrestrial signals.
In a commentary, Amanda Weltman and Anthony Walters, of the High Energy Physics, Cosmology and Astrophysics Theory Group at the University of Cape Town, said that linking the FRB to a magnetar “potentially solves a key puzzle.”
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