Researchers using CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope, have detected unusual radio pulses from a previously dormant star with a powerful magnetic field.
A new study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society has now shed new light on them, after spotting a “highly active” repeating FRB signal that is behaving differently to anything ever detected before.
An international team of astronomers have identified a powerful magnetic field in the Wolf-Rayet star HD 45166, the exposed helium core of a star that has lost its outer layers of hydrogen.
By connecting two of the biggest radio telescopes in the world, astronomers have discovered that a simple binary wind fast radio bursts after all. The bursts may come from a highly magnetized, isolated neutron star - magnetar.
The star in question is called Swift J1818.0–1Th607 is what's known as a magnetar, though, none of the magnetars have ever been observed pulsing in quite the same way as Swift J1818.0–1607.
Only 31 magnetars ( type of neutron star that has the strongest magnetic field ) have even been discovered and recently astronomers have found an extremely unique object that is both a magnetar and a pulsar.
Until now, the source of Fast Radio Bursts was a mystery. Now astronomers at multiple institutions have pinpointed the FRB spotted in the Milky Way and conclude it most likely was generated by a magnetar.
Magnetars generate the absolute most powerful magnetic fields the cosmos has ever seen – and astronomers have recently spotted a newborn. It appears to be the youngest- ever magnetar ever detected.
A Milky Way magnetar called SGR 1935+2154 may have just massively contributed to solving the mystery of powerful deep-space radio signals that have vexed astronomers for years.
