A team of researchers believes the burst of radio waves from deep space came from a bubble of plasma surrounding a compact object, one of the densest objects in the universe.
The waves were fast radio bursts, or FRBs, a mysterious class of radio waves characterized by their brightness and unpredictable lengths. Many are fleeting, but some are highly reliable; a different team last year described one source that had been flashing every 22 minutes for 30 years.
Astronomers discovered the burst, dubbed FRB20201124A, in 2020, emanating from a source about 1.3 billion light-years away. Last year, a different team of researchers discovered the most distant burst yet, emanating from a source about 10 billion light-years away. So the newly analyzed burst appears to be practically local. Published This week in nature Description of the nature of its origin
“We were able to demonstrate through observations that the continuous emission observed alongside some fast radio bursts behaves as expected from the nebular emission model, i.e. a ‘bubble’ of ionized gas surrounding the central engine,” said Gabriele Bruni, a researcher at the National Institute of Astrophysics and lead author of the new paper, in a study by the National Institute of Astrophysics. launch.
Fast radio bursts are radio waves that generate “as much energy in a thousandth of a second as the Sun generates in a year.” According to NASAThey are truly fascinating, making them exciting sources of data for radio astronomers. FRB20201124A was examined using the most sensitive radio telescopes on Earth, a very large array. The team determined that the FRB came from a bubble of plasma surrounding a dense object.
What kind of dense object could be at the center of the bubble, you wonder? There are two possibilities, but both are extremely dense. The new data suggests that a magnetar—a strongly magnetized neutron star—might be at its core. Another possibility is a binary system of a neutron star or a black hole that is taking in massive amounts of material from a smaller companion star. Winds from either source could effectively “blow away” the surrounding bubble of plasma, according to the National Institute of Astrophysics. launch.
“Optical observations were an important element in studying the FRB region at a spatial resolution similar to that of radio observations,” said Eliana Palazzi, co-author of the study and a researcher at the National Institute of Astrophysics. “Mapping the hydrogen emission at such a high level of detail allowed us to infer the local star formation rate, which we found to be too low to justify persistent radio emission.”
Like other reliable fast radio bursts, FRB20201124A’s radio emission is continuous. In fact, it is the weakest continuous radio emission ever observed from an FRB. Further observations of similar fast radio bursts and their sources may clarify the conditions that generate bursts in general, as well as the different types of bursts, with different strengths and durations.
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