Astrophysicists detected a wave of cosmic radio waves inside our galaxy for the first time and determined its source, according to research published in the journal Nature, which sheds light on One of the secrets of the universe.
The source has caused Rapid fast radio waves, Which are intense flashes of radio frequency that lasts only a few milliseconds, a lake for scientists since it was first discovered a little over a decade ago.
It is usually outside the galaxy, which means that it originated outside our galaxy, but on April 28 of this year, multiple telescopes detected similar eruptions from a region within the Milky Way.
The Milky Way Galaxy in the sky of Macedonia (Archives)
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More importantly, scientists were able to determine its source, which is the magnetic star “EG 1935 + 2154”.
Magnetic stars, the neutron stars considered to be the most magnetic objects in the universe, have long been the prime suspects of being the source of fast radio waves.
But this discovery marks the first time that astronomers have been able to track the signal directly to a magnetic star.
Within a fraction of a second, the magnetic star released an amount of energy similar to the sun’s radio waves in 30 seconds, said Christopher Bushenk, who was among the teams that monitored these eruptions.
He explained that the outburst was “so bright” that in theory, if you had a record of primary data with a “4G LTE” receiver in your mobile phone and knew what to look for, “you might have found this signal that came in the middle of The road almost across the galaxy “in phone data.
He added that this energy can be compared to the explosion of fast radio waves from outside the galaxy, which reinforces the hypothesis that magnetic stars are the source of most of the eruptions that occur outside the galaxy.
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A NASA visualization of a magnetic star
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Different theories
These eruptions have long been the subject of intense debate even as small steps have been taken toward determining their origin.
But one problem is that it’s hard to pinpoint instantaneous flashes without knowing where to look for them.
Theories of their origins have ranged from catastrophic events such as supernovas to neutron stars, which are super-dense stellar fragments that formed after a star exploded. There is also a more strange explanation, which astronomers exclude, And it is that it signals from outside the planet.
Commenting on the study, Amanda Wiltman and Anthony Walters of the “High Energy Physics, Cosmology and Astrophysics” group at the University of Cape Town wrote that the association of fast radio waves with a magnetic star “may solve a major mystery.”
However, they added, the results also raise new questions, including what mechanism would produce “such rare bright radio flashes with X-ray isotopes?” “One of the promising possibilities is the collision of a flash of a magnetic star with the surrounding environment, and thus the birth of a shock wave,” they added, adding that the results highlight the need for international cooperation in astronomy and the observation of different types of signals.
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