Neutron stars can beam radio bursts to Earth
A discovery by international scientists suggests that neutron stars could be the source of mysterious radio bursts detected from Earth.
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Green Bank is one of the telescopes that picked up the radio burst. |
An international team of scientists used the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, USA, and the William E. Gordon Telescope in Puerto Rico to study fast radio bursts (FRBs). They confirmed that the source of the bursts is an extreme environment located between the most highly magnetic regions of space,International Business Timesyesterday news
Astronomers use the term radio burst to describe mysterious, unexplained radio signals that originate far away. Although extremely short-lived, lasting only a few milliseconds at most, these bursts of radio waves are powerful enough to be detected in space.
One source, FRB 121102, located in a dwarf galaxy 3 billion light-years from Earth, has attracted particular attention because it is the only one of its kind to repeat itself. Scientists have detected more than 200 high-energy bursts coming from it, but have yet to explain exactly how they form.
Extremely strong magnetic fields are typically only found around black holes and at the centers of galaxies, but FRBs can be explained by combining other astrophysical conditions.
Based on FRB data, scientists believe they may come from a highly magnetic neutron star called a magnetar, located near a supermassive black hole with a mass 10-100 million times that of the Sun and producing extremely strong magnetic fields or ejecting hot gas. The research results were published in the journal Nature.
The length of the radio bursts ranged from 30 microseconds to 9 milliseconds, suggesting the source could be 10 kilometers across, about the size of a typical neutron star, according to scientists. Neutron stars are the collapsed cores of larger stars that were once 10 to 29 times the mass of the Sun. They are the smallest and densest stars known.
However, this hypothesis still leaves many factors unexplained. "At this point, we really don't understand the mechanism. There are many questions, such as how a rotating neutron star can generate the high energy levels seen in FRBs?" said scientist Vishal Gaijar of the University of California, Berkeley's SETI Research Center and Breakthrough Listen, two organizations dedicated to searching for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence.
Another possible explanation is that the magnetar could be interacting with a cloud of material that originated from the original dead star. However, the researchers have not completely ruled out the possibility that the flashes came from an advanced alien civilization.
