A mysterious fast radio burst has been detected within our Milky Way galaxy; It comes from a magnetar located 30,000 light-years away from Earth and is much more powerful and brighter than previous FRBs (Fast Radio Burst).
FRBs are one of the most fascinating astronomical mysteries. In a matter of a few milliseconds, powerful bursts of radio waves arrive from deep space with unknown origin. They were first discovered just over a decade ago (in 2007) , so there is still a lot we don’t know about them.
To date, just over 100 FRBs have been detected in the sky and all of them have been extragalactic. Now, we have the opportunity to study one in more detail, since it seems to be the first to emanate from our galaxy , according to the members of the CHIME ( Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment ) collaboration, responsible for the detection of many other FRBs. The CHIME radio telescope is an instrument specifically designed to study phenomena such as FRBs in order to answer important questions in astrophysics. This particular telescope has greatly increased the blast detection rate since it was inaugurated in September 2017.
The signal was detected on April 28, 2020 and came from an object in our own galaxy. It is the first time that an FRB has been identified from within the Milky Way and could help solve one of the greatest mysteries in astronomy.
What is it?
With a few notable exceptions, FRBs are not repeated. They represent an inordinate amount of energy poured into the cosmos in less than a second and are not associated with any particular type of galaxy or another. The diversity of sources suggests that a great variety of processes in the universe, all of them violent , lead to the formation of fast radio bursts.
The source of the FRB , in this case, is a magnetar (highly magnetic neutron stars) in the Milky Way called SGR 1935 + 2154 and located just 30,000 light years away, in the constellation Vulpecula. The magnetic field of a magnetar is approximately one hundred million times stronger than any man-made magnet (it is so strong that if you were to get within 1,000 km of the magnetar it would dissolve your body instantly). The signal was recorded by radio observatories around the world, with a radio burst so incredibly bright that it would have been detectable from another galaxy. The density of the signal, measured in unit spectral flux, was more than one million jansky milliseconds.
According to the researchers, this FRB is much more powerful than the extragalactic FRBs detected in the past, but detecting nearby bursts with properties similar to FRBs is a surprising discovery for astronomers who had wondered if weaker versions of the FRBs existed near the one. Earth or even if they would glow.
“We can imagine that FRB intensities occur over a wide range of luminosities, and now we are only detecting the brightest,” says Shri Kulkarni, Caltech astronomer and STARE2 project investigator. This assumption, combined with their data, led the STARE2 group to go so far as to state in their bulletin – Atel, a bulletin board for astronomers – that “we conclude that active magnetars are a source of FRB at extragalactic distances .”
The find and the barrage of observations from around the world following this announcement are certainly exciting, but have yet to be officially confirmed . Hopefully we will know more about this event and its possible source soon, but this recent detection could help us a lot to understand its true nature.
One last curiosity . The constellation where the FRB’s origin magnetar is located was the same in which the first pulsar was discovered in 1967 .
Reference: AstronomersTelegram.org
