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Magnetars are some of the most extreme objects in the universe, and that is saying something. These stellar remnants are neutron stars, but while most neutron stars are silent and self-contained, magnetars have magnetic fields billions of times more powerful than Earth’s and could be the source of the mysterious Fast Radio Bursts that astronomers have been monitoring for the past few years. We have never seen a magnetar arise, but a new high-energy event several billion light-years away could be the first: a kilonova that signals the merger of two neutron stars.
Neutron stars, white dwarfs, and black holes are all stellar remnants that we hear about regularly. The fate of a main sequence star to become one of these objects is primarily a function of its mass. Larger stars become black holes, while slightly smaller ones become neutron stars. A star like the sun will eventually collapse into a white dwarf. A neutron star can also end up as a pulsar or magnetar, depending on its properties. Other neutron stars they can fuse together to become magnetars, and that’s what astronomers think they’ve spotted.
Scientists believe that magnetars produce their ultra-strong magnetic field thanks to the superconducting material flowing inside. The effects of such powerful magnetic fields are almost unfathomable, therefore, of course, the formation of such an object is a highly energetic event. The main theories state that magnetars can arise when two small neutron stars collide. If they are too large, the resulting object is a black hole, but with the right mass you end up with a magnetar.
Last May, astronomers detected a gamma-ray beacon from an object more than 5.5 billion light years away. This matched the theoretical signature of a magnetar formation, so teams around the world turned their most powerful tools towards the source, including NASA’s Swift Observatory in space, the Very Large Array in New Mexico, and the Keck Observatory at Hawaii. The best data came from none other than the ever-reliable Hubble Space Telescope.
Hubble successfully detected infrared emission (see above) from the formation of heavy elements such as gold, platinum and uranium. This is another thing astronomers expect to see in a collision of neutron stars, sometimes known as a kilonova. The team notes that the IR signal was much brighter than expected – 10 times brighter, in fact. For some, this may be confirmation of magnetar formation. If the neutron stars had formed a black hole, the IR emission would have been within the expected ranges.
This research has yet to be reviewed by other teams, but is available on the arXiv.org preprint server. If confirmed, this would be the first time we will see a magnetar being born and the enormous energy output recorded by Hubble could reveal a lot about how these bizarre objects work.
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