Researchers zero in on the supply of quick radio bursts

Image of a blue-white sphere, representing the star.

Enlarge / An occasion on the floor of a magnetar might produce quick radio bursts. (credit score: NASA’s Goddard Area Flight Middle)

Quick radio bursts are precisely what their identify implies: a sudden surge of photons at radio frequencies that always lasts for lower than a second. As soon as scientists had completed convincing themselves that they weren’t taking a look at gear glitches, the search was on for what was producing the huge quantities of power concerned in a quick radio burst (FRB).

The invention of the primary repeating FRB informed us that the method that generates an FRB would not destroy the item that does the manufacturing. Finally, an FRB was discovered that was related to occasions at further wavelengths, permitting the supply to be recognized: a magnetar, a subset of neutron stars that has the Universe’s most excessive magnetic fields. Whereas that represents wonderful progress, it nonetheless would not inform us something concerning the physics of how the burst is produced—data that might presumably inform us why most magnetars do not produce them and why the burst tends to begin and cease so instantly.

Now, researchers have recognized an FRB that helps restrict our concepts about what can produce them. The FRB itself seems to be a single occasion, however it’s composed of 9 particular person bursts separated by about 215 milliseconds. The fast tempo signifies that the supply of the burst nearly actually must be close to the floor of the magnetar.

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