Scientists have come to understand the causes of a strange explosion of radio waves from space, which NASA X-ray telescopes recorded in 2022. New article in the magazine Nature offers an explanation for fast radio bursts, which can release as much energy in a fraction of a second as the Sun releases in an entire year.
The burst of energy came from a magnetar, a rare type of neutron star. This object has an extremely powerful magnetic field, billions of times stronger than that of a regular neutron star. So far, only about 30 such magnetars have been found.
The fast radio burst described in the paper comes from a magnetar called SGR 1935+2154, an object about 19 km across located about 30,000 light-years away. In 2020, the first fast radio burst from this magnetar was detected. It happened again in 2022.
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The researchers observed the flare using two NASA telescopes and described what happened on the surface of the magnetar and in its immediate environment before and after the flare. It is noted that a fast radio burst was observed between two “glitches” when the magnetar suddenly began to spin faster.
A magnetar typically spins about 3.2 times per second, spinning at speeds of more than 11,000 kilometers per hour. This means that any increase or decrease in its speed requires a huge amount of energy. Amazingly, between failures it slowed down to its initial speed in just nine hours – 100 times faster than ever before in a magnetar.
“Typically, when failures occur, it takes weeks or months for the magnetar to return to normal speed,” study co-author Chin-Ping Hu, an astrophysicist at National Changhua University of Education in Taiwan, said in a NASA statement.
In addition, scientists discovered that before the 2022 fast radio burst, the magnetar began to emit powerful x-rays and gamma rays.
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Scientists still don’t know exactly what triggered the fast radio burst, but they think it might have something to do with the structure of the magnetar. The outer part of the object is solid and the force of gravity crushes the inner part into a state of so-called “superfluid material”.
The study authors use an analogy with a glass of water to explain their assumption about the causes of bursts of radio emission. When you move a glass of water around, the water remains inside, synchronizing with the movement of the glass. But if there is a failure in this synchronized movement, then the water splashes out of the glass. Something similar can happen with bursts of radio waves when the magnetar changes its rotation speed.
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