NASA published this story on January 9, 2024. Edits by EarthSky. Video by EarthSky.
Astronomers utilizing NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have discovered a uncommon occasion in an oddball place.
It’s referred to as a quick radio burst (FRB), a fleeting blast of vitality that may – for a number of milliseconds – outshine a complete galaxy. A whole lot of FRBs have been detected over the previous few years. They pop off all around the sky like digicam flashes at a stadium occasion, however the sources behind these intense bursts of radiation stay unsure.
This new FRB (FRB 20220610A) is especially bizarre as a result of it erupted midway throughout the universe, making it the farthest and strongest instance detected up to now.
And if that’s not unusual sufficient, it simply acquired weirder primarily based on the follow-up Hubble observations made after its discovery. The FRB flashed in what looks like an unlikely place: a set of galaxies that existed when the universe was solely 5 billion years outdated. The massive majority of earlier FRBs have been present in remoted galaxies.
These outcomes had been introduced this week, on the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in New Orleans, Louisiana.
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4 occasions extra energetic
FRB 20220610A was first detected on June 10, 2022, by the Australian Sq. Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope in Western Australia. The European Southern Observatory’s Very Massive Telescope in Chile confirmed that the FRB got here from a distant place. The FRB was 4 occasions extra energetic than nearer FRBs. Lead writer Alexa Gordon of Northwestern College in Evanston, Illinois, said:
It required Hubble’s eager sharpness and sensitivity to pinpoint precisely the place the FRB got here from. With out Hubble’s imaging, it will nonetheless stay a thriller as as to if this was originating from one monolithic galaxy or from some sort of interacting system. It’s a majority of these environments – these bizarre ones – which might be driving us towards higher understanding the thriller of FRBs.
Hubble’s crisp pictures recommend this FRB originated in an atmosphere the place there could also be as many as seven galaxies on a doable path to merging, which might even be very important, researchers say. Co-investigator Wen-fai Fong, additionally of Northwestern College, commented:
We’re finally attempting to reply the questions: What causes them? What are their progenitors and what are their origins? The Hubble observations present a spectacular view of the stunning kinds of environments that give rise to those mysterious occasions.
What makes a quick radio burst?
Although astronomers don’t have a consensus on the doable mechanism behind this extraordinary phenomenon, it’s usually thought that FRBs should contain some kind of compact object, like a black hole or neutron star. One excessive sort of neutron star is known as a magnetar, essentially the most intensely magnetic sort of neutron star within the universe. It has a magnetic area that’s so sturdy that, if a magnetar had been situated midway between Earth and the moon, it will erase the magnetic strip on everybody’s bank card on the earth.
A lot worse but, if an astronaut traveled inside a number of hundred miles of the magnetar, they might successfully be dissolved, as a result of each atom of their physique could be disrupted.
Potential mechanisms for FRBs contain some sort of jarring starquake, or alternatively, an explosion precipitated when a magnetar’s twisting magnetic area strains snap and reconnect. An identical phenomenon occurs on the sun, inflicting solar flares, however a magnetar’s area is a trillion occasions stronger than our sun’s magnetosphere.
The snapping would generate an FRB’s flash, or would possibly make a shock wave that incinerates surrounding dust and heats fuel into plasma.
A number of flavors of magnetars
In a single case, a magnetar might be an exploding object orbiting a black hole surrounded by a disk of fabric. One other various is a pair of orbiting neutron stars whose magnetospheres periodically work together, making a cavity the place eruptions can happen. It’s estimated that magnetars are lively for about 10,000 years earlier than settling down, so they might be anticipated to be discovered the place a firestorm of star start is going down. However this doesn’t appear to be the case for all magnetars.
Within the close to future, FRB experiments will improve their sensitivity, resulting in an unprecedented charge within the variety of FRBs detected at these distances. Astronomers will quickly study simply how particular the atmosphere of this FRB was. Gordon said:
We simply have to preserve discovering extra of those FRBs, each close by and much away, and in all these several types of environments.
Backside line: Probably the most distant recognized quick radio burst flashed from what looks like an unlikely place: a set of galaxies that existed when the universe was solely 5 billion years outdated. Most quick radio bursts have been present in remoted galaxies.
