Quick radio bursts (FRBs) are intense flashes of radio mild that final for less than a fraction of a second.
They’re probably brought on by the extreme magnetic fields of a magnetar, which is a extremely magnetic neutron star. Past that, FRBs stay a little bit of a thriller.
We all know that almost all of them originate from exterior our galaxy, although the few which have occurred inside our galaxy have allowed us to pin the supply on neutron stars.
We additionally know that a few of them repeat, which means that FRBs cannot be brought on by a cataclysmic occasion corresponding to a supernova. Thanks to at least one repeating FRB, we now know one thing new about them.
In a brand new examine revealed in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, astronomers checked out FRB 20240209A, which was first noticed by the CHIME radio telescope in February 2024.
The FRB occurred to be a repeater and was noticed 21 instances between February and June. As a result of it saved repeating, the workforce was in a position to observe six of the FRB occasions from a smaller, companion observatory 60 kilometers away. This allowed the workforce to pinpoint the supply regardless that it was two billion light-years away.
They discovered a few uncommon issues. The primary is that the FRB originated from the sting area of a galaxy. Most FRBs happen within the extra central area of a galaxy as a result of that is the place stars type and subsequently the place you are extra more likely to discover neutron stars.
The second was that this explicit galaxy is greater than 11 billion years previous, and is properly previous its star-forming interval. What’s shocking about that’s that neutron stars are the remnants of large stars that die as supernovae.
Giant stars have cosmically brief lifetimes, so the truth that this FRB occurred in an previous, long-dead galaxy signifies that the neutron star that generated it should even be previous.
The overall reasoning was that FRBs are brought on by younger magnetars. The thought is that they could possibly be brought on by magnetic flares, just like photo voltaic flares of the Solar. However since neutron stars cannot generate new warmth, they cool and turn out to be inactive over time. So we should not see previous neutron stars producing FRBs. This examine proves that previous stars can create FRBs.
One clarification for that is that the FRB may need occurred not throughout the galactic edge itself, however slightly in a dense globular cluster orbiting on the fringe of the galaxy.
The galaxy is just too far-off for us to differentiate between these two choices, however globular clusters are identified to have quite a few stellar mergers. One risk is that this repeating FRB was brought on by merging magnetars. As their magnetic fields merged and realigned, bursts of radio vitality had been launched to create the FRB.
It should take extra observations to make sure, however it’s now clear that the astrophysical processes that create FRBs are extra numerous than we thought.
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