Mystery of the cosmos unfolds as astronomers stumble upon a baffling astronomical signal emanating from an ancient, slumbering galaxy. A new source of Fast Radio Bursts has been discovered, challenging existing theories and sparking fresh ideas about magnetars.
Fast radio bursts are millisecond-long eruptions of intense radio waves. They are a flash of energy that lasts only a few milliseconds, but is as powerful as the sun’s entire output for an entire day. Astronomers have observed thousands of these blasts, but only about 100 have been traced back to their origins. Most of them came from lively neighborhoods full of young stars.
Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are brief, intense pulses of energy originating from distant galaxies.
These events last mere milliseconds but release as much energy as the sun does in an entire day.
Scientists believe FRBs may be caused by cataclysmic events such as supernovae or neutron star mergers.
The first FRB was detected in 2007, and since then, over 80 have been identified.
Research on FRBs continues to uncover their origins and properties, providing insights into extreme astrophysical phenomena.
Between February and July 2024, the CHIME radio telescope array in Canada detected 22 bursts from an FRB dubbed FRB 20240209A. Six of those bursts were also detected nearly 70 kilometers away at a CHIME auxiliary telescope called ‘k’niʔatn k’l◡stk’masqt‘, which allowed researchers to pinpoint the location of the FRB in the sky. To their surprise, it came from the outskirts of an ancient galaxy that is about 11 billion years old and whose star-forming years are long behind it.
Astronomers think FRBs come mostly from magnetized stellar corpses called magnetars, which are remnants of supernova explosions. Such supernovas are expected where a lot of stars are actively forming — not in an old galaxy and certainly not so far from the galaxy’s center. ‘The host galaxy itself is a dead galaxy,‘ says coauthor Vishwangi Shah. ‘So the question is: How are such energetic signals being produced from such a region of space?’_
This discovery has sparked new ideas about how magnetars form and produce FRBs. Perhaps magnetars come from white dwarfs collapsing under their own gravity or out of the wreckage of two neutron stars colliding. The team has applied for observations with the James Webb Space Telescope to see if there is a globular cluster in the spot where the new FRB came from.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space observatory launched by NASA in December 2021.
It is designed to study the formation of galaxies and stars in the early universe, as well as the composition of distant planets.
The JWST features a 6.5-meter primary mirror and a sunshield to maintain extremely low temperatures.
Its advanced instrumentation allows for observations in infrared light, enabling scientists to study objects that are too cool or distant for other telescopes to detect.
‘I think that magnetars are still a compelling origin story for FRBs,‘ says astronomer Tarraneh Eftekhari. ‘But I think what this discovery is telling us is there are probably multiple ways you can form magnetars that produce FRBs.’
- sciencenews.org | Puzzling Signal Emitted by Dormant Galaxy Stuns Scientific Community
