Scientists have long been trying to determine how elements heavier than iron, including gold and platinum, were first created and scattered through the Universe, and new research may give us another part of the answer: magnetars.
When a magnetar within the Milky Way galaxy belched out a flare of colossally powerful radio waves in 2020, scientists finally had concrete evidence to pin down an origin for fast radio bursts.
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.
