Heart-shaped for the stars. My astronomy work.
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Astronomers have detected a radio signal from a distant galaxy that flashes for up to three seconds on a regular basis.
More than a billion light-years away, the signal is called FRB 20191221A and is classified as a “radio burst”: a radio pulse. About 1,000 times longer than most FRBs, FRB 20191221A is now the most durable and regular radio signal known in the entire night sky.
It was detected using the CHIME radio telescope in British Columbia, Canada, which detected more than 500 FRBs in its first year of operation. The results were published in Nature.
Scientists think the radio signal may have come from a neutron star, what is left of the collapsed core of a giant star after it has exploded as a supernova. Neutron stars rotate rapidly.
While the origin of FRBs is mysterious, it is hoped that the frequency of each, and how they differ in distance from us, can tell scientists the exact speed at which the universe is expanding. The first FRB was discovered in 2007.
FRB 20191221A was first detected on December 21, 2019. “It was unusual,” said Daniele Michilli, a postdoc at the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research at MIT. “Not only was it very long, it lasted about three seconds, but there were periodic peaks that were remarkably accurate, emitting every fraction of a second: boom, boom, boom, like a heartbeat.”
A work of art that illustrates a fast radio. Magnetars are types of neutron stars that have many … [+] powerful magnetic fields, billions of times stronger than Earth’s own field and even more powerful than normal neutron stars. Recently, astronomers have suggested that asteroids may be orbiting some of these objects, leading to the emission of fast radio bursts (FRBs). The idea is that asteroids orbiting within the wind from the magnet, a stream of fast particles emitted from its surface, cut a wake in the wind, resulting in the generation of an electric current around the wake. When the magnetic wind passes through the wake, a magnetic perturbation is created that generates an extremely intense and narrow beam of radio energy. In 2020, astronomers detected the first FRB of a magnet – called SGR 1935 + 2154 – located in our own galaxy. The whole event ended in a split second.
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So what could be the source of FRB 20191221A?
“There aren’t many things in the universe that emit strictly periodic signals,” Michilli said. “The examples we know of in our own galaxy are radio pulsars and magnets, which rotate and produce a beacon-like ray emission. And we think this new signal could be a magnet or a pulsar with steroids.”
Types of neutron stars, a pulsar is a neutron star that emits beams of radio waves and appears to pulsate as the star rotates while a magnet has extreme magnetic fields. The FRB 20191221A signal is a million times brighter than the pulses and magnets of the Milky Way.
“From the properties of this new signal, we can say that around this source, there is a cloud of plasma that must be extremely turbulent,” Michilli said. “Future telescopes promise to discover thousands of FRBs a month, and right now we can find many more of these periodic signals.”
I wish you clear skies and open eyes.